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Cliap. Copyright No. 

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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



SOUTH LONDON 



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SOUTH LONDON 



BY 



SIR WALTER BESANT, M.A., F.S.A. 

AUTHOR OF 

'LONDON,* 'WESTMINSTER,' ' FIFTY YEARS AGO,' ' SIR RICHARD WHITTINGTON ' 

' GASPARD DE COUGNY,' ETC. 



WITH AN ETCHING BY FRANCIS S. WALKER. R.E. 
AND 119 ILLUSTRATIONS 



NEW YORK 

FREDERICK A. STOKES COMPANY 

PUBLISHERS 



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19 5s, 



Copyright, 1898, by 
SIR WALTER BESANT 




PREFACE 

In sending forth this book on ' SOUTH LONDON,' the successor 
to my two preceding books on ' London ' and ' Westmin- . 
STER,' I have to explain in this case, as before, that it is not a 
history, or a chronicle, or a consecutive account of the Borough 
and her suburbs that I offer, but, as in the other two books, 
chapters taken here and there from the mass of material which 
lies ready to hand, and especially chapters which illustrate the 
most important part of History, namely, the condition, the 
manners, the customs of the people dwelling in this place, now, 
like Westminster, a part of London : yet, until two or three 
hundred years ago, an ancient marsh kept from the overflowing 
tide by an Embankment, joined to the Dover road by a Cause- 
way, settled and inhabited by two or three Houses of 
Religious : by half a dozen Palaces of Bishops, Abbots, and 
great Lords : by a colony of fishermen living on the Embank- 
ment from time immemorial, since the Embankment itself was 
built : and by a street of Inns and shops. 

I hope that ' SOUTH London ' will be received with favour 
equal to that bestowed upon its predecessors. The chief 
difficulty in writing it has been that of selection from the 
great treasures which have accumulated about this strange 
spot. The contents of this volume do not form a tenth part 
of what might be written on the same plan, and still without 
including the History Proper of the Borough. I am like the 
showman in the ' Cries of London '—I pull the strings, and 
the children peep. Lo ! Allectus goes forth to fight and die 
on Clapham Common : William's men burn the fishermen's 



vi SOUTH LONDON 

cottages : little King Richard, that lovely boy, rides out, all in 
white and gold, from his Palace at Kennington — saw one ever 
so gallant a lad ? The Bastard of Falconbridge bombards 
the city : Sir John Fastolfe's man is pressed into Jack Cade's 
army : the Minters make their last Sanctuary opposite St. 
George's : the Debtors languish in the King's Bench. There 
are many pictures in the box — but how many more there are 
for which no room could be found ! 

I must acknowledge my obligations, first, to the Editor 
of the Pall Mall Magazine^ where half of these chapters first 
had the honour of appearing, for the wealth of illustration of 
which he thought them worthy : and next to the artist, Mr. 
Percy Wadham, who has so faithfully and so cunningly carried 
out the task committed to him. 

WALTER BESANT. 

United University Club : 
September 1898. 



CONTENTS 



CHAPTER 



THE FIRST SETTLEMENTS 



PAGE 
I 



11. EARLY HISTORY 25 

III. A FORGOTTEN MONASTERY 47 

IV. THE ROYAL HOUSES OF SOUTH LONDON . . . . 69 
V. PAGEANTS AND RIDINGS . ^ 1 24 

VI. A FORGOTTEN WORTHY 1 34 

VII. THE BOMBARDMENT OF LONDON 1 53 

VIII. THE PILGRIMS „ . . 157 

IX. THE LADY FAIR 1 79 

X. ST. MARY OVERIES I9I 

XI. THE SHOW FOLK 2o6 

XII. BELOW BRIDGE 229 

XIII. THE LATER SANCTUARY 24 1 

XIV. IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 248 

XV, THE DEBTORS' PRISON . . . . . . .272 

XVI. THE PLEASURE GARDENS . 282 

XVII. SOUTH LONDON OF TO-DAY ...... 30I 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



ST. SAVIOUR'S, SOUTHWARK Frontispiece 

Etched by F. S. Walker, R.E. 

PAGE 

VIEW FROM SOUTHWARK MARSH IN PREHISTORIC TIMES . . 3 

CAUSEWAY ACROSS SOUTHWARK MARSH 7 

FISHERS' HUTS AT THE MOUTH OF THE FLEET .... 9 

BARKING CREEK .II 

RELICS OF THE STONE AGE 1 5 

A RELIC OF THE STONE AGE \^ 

RELICS OF THE BRONZE AGE I9 

MERCHANTS CROSSING SOUTHWARK MARSH 27 

LONDON BRIDGE, A.D. lOOO 29 

A DANISH HOUSE 3I 

SHIPS, BAYEUX TAPESTRY 33 

A VIKING SHIP 34 

SKETCH MAP 37 

DIAGRAM 40 

THE GOKSTAD SHIP . . . 41 

SHIPS OF WILLIAM THE CONQUEROR 43 

BAYEUX TAPESTRY 45 

THE MONASTERY OF BERMONDSEY 5 1 

BERMONDSEY ABBEY 52 

GATEWAY OF BERMONDSEY ABBEY 53 

ST. OLAVE, SOUTHWARK 6 1 

' LE LOKE ' 63 

REMAINS OF THE PALACE OF THE BISHOP OF WINCHESTER, 

FROM THE SOUTH 67 

THE LONG BARN 7° 

SKETCH MAP 7' 



X SOUTH LONDON 

PAGE 

GATEWAY IN THE HALL, ELTHAM PALACE 75 

THE ANCIENT ROYAL PALACE AT GREENWICH , . . . JJ 

SEAL OF THE BLACK PRINCE 83 

Front Aliens History oj" Lambeth 

THE HIGH STREET, SOUTHWARK, AS IT APPEARED MDXLIII . . 85 

REMAINS OF ELTHAM PALACE, 1 796 . . . . . • QI 

KING JOHN'S PALACE, KENT . ' 93 

From a Drawing by J. Hasieli, 1804 

REMAINS OF ELTHAM PALACE 95 

THE MOAT BRIDGE, ELTHAM PALACE 97 

GREENWICH, 1662 99 

From a Drawing by Jonas Moore 

GREENWICH HOSPITAL . . . lOI 

From a Drawing by Schnebbelie 

LAMBETH PALACE I09 

BONNER HALL, LAMBETH Ill 

RESIDENCE OF GUY FAWKES, LAMBETH II 3 

From ' La Belle Assemblee,' November 1822 

BISHOP'S WALK, LAMBETH II4 

INTERIOR OF THE HALL, LAMBETH PALACE II 5 

From an Engraving dated 1804 

LAMBETH PALACE, FROM THE RIVER I16 

LOLLARDS' TOWER, LAMBETH PALACE II 7 

DOORWAY IN THE LOLLARDS' TOWER II 9 

LOLLARDS' PRISON 121 

WHITE HART INN, SOUTHWARK I37 

SURREY END OF LONDON BRIDGE, FROM HIGH STREET, SOUTH- 
WARK 139 

THE SITE OF SIR JOHN FASTOLF'S HOUSE IN TOOLEY STREET . 143 
HOUSES IN HIGH STREET, SOUTHWARK, 1550 . . . .149 

OLD HALL, KING'S HEAD, AYLESBURV 1 58 

OLD HALL, AYLESBURY . . . 1 59 

CANTERBURY PILGRIMS . . 160 

15TH CENTURY GOLDSMITH 165 

RICH MERCHANT AND HIS WIFE, I4TT^ CENTURY . . . . 165 

14TH CENTURY CRAFTSMAN . . 1 68 

I4TH CENTURY MERCHANT . . , . . = , . . 168 

I4TH CENTURY CRAFTSMAN . . 168 



LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xi 

I'AGK 

PEDLAR 175 

Front the Stained Window in Lambeth Church 

MINSTRELS, A.D. 1480 177 

BOOTH, SOUTHWARK FAIR 181 

GREENWICH PARK ON WHITSUN MONDAY 1 87 

From an Engraving by Rawle, 1802 

A SEAL OF ST. MARY OVERIES 1 92 

SEALS OF ST. MARY OVERIES 1 93 

NORTH-EAST VIEW OF ST. SAVIOUR'S, SOUTHWARK, 1800 . . 194 

CRYPT OF ST. MARY OVERIES 1 95 

GATEWAY OF ST. MARY'S PRIORY, SOUTHWARK, 181I . . . 1 97 

From a Drazving by IVhichelo 

REMAINS OF THE OLD PRIORY, ST. MARY OVERIES . . .199 

TOMB OF BISHOP ANDREWS, ST. MARY OVERIES . . . . 20I 

A CORNER IN ST. SAVIOUR'S, SOUTHWARK 203 

ST. SAVIOUR'S, SOUTHWARK, 1790 204 

WINCHESTER PALACE 207 

THE GLOBE THEATRE . . * 209 

From, the Grace Collection 

BEAR GARDEN 213 

THE BEAR GARDEN AND HOPE THEATRE, 1616 . . . . 221 

INTERIOR OF THE OLD SWAN THEATRE 223 

A FETE AT HORSELYDOWN IN 1590 23 1 

From the Painting by G. Ho^nagel, at Hatfield 

THE OLD ELEPHANT AND CASTLE, 1814 233 

VIEW NEAR THE STORE-HOUSE, DEPTFORD 235 

From an Engraving by John Boydell, 1750 

GEORGE HOTEL, BOROUGH 239 

MINT STREET, BOROUGH . . . 245 

OLD HOUSE, STONEY STREET, SOUTHWARK 249 

ST. THOMAS'S HOSPITAL 250 

From an old Print 

SOME ANCIENT HOUSES IN THE LONG WALK, BERMONDSEY . 25 1 

JAMAICA HOUSE, BERMONDSEY 252 

QUEEN ELIZABETH'S FREE GRAMMAR SCHOOL 253 

ANCIENT BUILDINGS, HIGH STREET, BOROUGH .... 254 

Froin a Drawing by T. Higham, 1820 

THE FALCON TAVERN, BANKSIDE . , . , . . 255 



xii SOUTH LONDON 

PAGE 

AN OLD MILL, BANKSIDE 256 

JOHN BUNYAN'S MEETING HOUSE, BANKSIDE 257 

THE OLD TOWN HALL, SOUTHWARK 258 

OLD HOUSES IN EWER STREET . . 259 

COURTYARD OF THE DOG AND BEAR INN 26 1 

THE WHITE BEAR TAVERN, SOUTHWARK 263 

ALLEN ROPEWALK, SOUTHWARK 265 

A SOUTH LONDON SLUM 267 

THE OLD TABARD INN, SOUTHWARK 268 

ST. GEORGE, SOUTHWARK : NORTH-WEST VIEW . . . . 269 

From an Engraving by B. Cole 
REMAINS OF THE MARSHALSEA : N.E. VIEW. A, CHAPEL ; B, 

PALACE COURT 273 

From ' The Gentleman's Magazine,' September 1803 

KING'S BENCH PRISON 275 

ANOTHER VIEW OF THE KING'S BENCH PRISON . . . .277 

VAUXHALL GARDENS 283 

From the Engraving by J. S. Miiller 

vauxhall jubilee admission ticket 285 

the dog and duck, bethlem 289 

a doorway, curlew street, bermondsey . . . . 30i 

in snow's fields, bermondsey 302 

the temple from the surrey bank 303 

holy trinity, rotherhithe 305 

czar peter's house, deptford 307 

alleyn's almshouses, 1840 309 

dulwich college, 1780 3 ii 

from the tower of st. saviour's ." 313 

red cross gardens, southwark 315 

st. saviour's dock 317 

below cherry garden pier 319 

the george inn 32 1 

LITTLE DORRIT'S WINDOW IN THE MARSHALSEA. . . . 32I 

ALCOVE FROM OLD LONDON BRIDGE, NOW AT GUY'S . . . 323 

THE ENTRANCE GATES TO GUY'S 325 

A FORMER ENTRANCE TO ST. THOMAS'S HOSPITAL. , . . 327 



SOUTH LONDON 

CHAPTER I 

THE FIRST SETTLEMENTS 

I PROPOSE to call the series of chapters which are to follow 
by the general name of ' South London.' Like their prede- 
cessors on ' London ' and ' Westminster,' they will not attempt, 
or pretend, to present a continuous history of this region — or, 
indeed, a history at all : they will endeavour to do for this 
part of London what their predecessors have already at- 
tempted for the Cities of London and Westminster : that is to 
say, they will present such episodes and incidents, with such 
characters, as may serve to illustrate the life of the place ; the 
manners and customs of the people ; the characteristics of the 
Borough and its outlying suburbs. So far as history means 
the march of armies and the clash of armour, we shall here 
find little history. So far, also, as history means the growth 
of our liberties, the struggles by which they were won ; the 
apparent decay, or defeat, from time to time, of the spirit of 
freedom, with its inevitable recovery : the reader and the 
student may be referred to the pages of a Stubbs or a Free- 
man—not to my humbler page. Great is the work, and worthy 
to be held in the highest honour, of those who trace out the 
irresistible march of national freedom : I cannot join their com- 
pany ; I must be contented with the lowlier, yet somewhat use- 
ful, task of showing how the people, my forefathers, lived, and 

B 



2 SOUTH LONDON 

what they thought, and how they sang and feasted and made 
love and grew old and died. 

My South London extends from Battersea in the west to 
Greenwich in the east, and from the river on the north to the 
first rising ground on the south. This rising ground, a gentle 
ascent, the beginning of the Surrey hills, can still be observed 
on the high roads of the south — Clapham, Brixton, Camber- 
well. It now occupies the place of what was formerly a low 
cliff, from ten to thirty or forty feet high, overhanging the 
broad level, and corresponding to those cliffs on the other side 
of the river, which closed in on either side of Walbrook and 
made the foundation of London possible. If we draw a 
straight line from the mouth of the Wandle on the west to the 
mouth of the Ravensbourne on the east, we shall, roughly 
speaking, indicate the southern boundary of our district ; 
unless, as we may very well do, we include Greenwich as 
well. The whole of this region constitutes the Great South 
Marsh : there is no rising ground, or hillock, or encroaching 
cliff over the whole of this flat expanse. Before the river was 
embanked* it was one unbroken marsh : for eight miles in 
length by a varying breadth of about two or two and a half 
miles, the tidal stream twice in the twenty-four hours sub- 
merged this space. Here and there lay islets or eyots, created, 
as the centuries crept on, by the gradual accumulation of 
branches, roots, reeds and rubbish, till they rose a few inches 
above high water ; the spring-tide covered them — sometimes 
swept them away— then others began to form. In later times, 
after the work of embankment had been commenced, these 
islets became permanent, and were afterwards known as 
Battersea, Bermondsey, Rotherhithe, Lambhithe, Newington, 
Kennington. Even then, for many a long year, they were but 
little areas rising a foot or two above the level, covered with 
sedge, reeds, and tufts of coarse grass, hardly distinguishable 
from the rest of the ground around them. Before the con- 
struction of the river wall, no trees stood upon this morass, no 



THE FIRST SETTLEMENTS 3 

flowers of the field flourished there, no thorns and bushes 
grew, no cattle pastured there ; the wild deer were afraid of 
it : there were no creatures of the land upon it. On the south 
side rose the cliff of clay and sand, continually falling and 
continually receding before the encroaching tide ; on the north 
side ran the river ; beyond the river the cliff stood up above 
the water's edge, where the tiny stream, afterwards named 
from the Wall, leaped bright and sparkling into the rolling 
flood. No man could live upon that marsh : its breath after 
sunset and in the night was pestilential. 




Vie^/Cfrx, 



Many streams poured into this marsh, and at low tide 
made their way across it into the Thames : at high tide their 
beds were lost in the shallows. Among them— to use names 
by which they were afterwards distinguished— were the 
Wandle, the Falcon, the Efifra, the Ravensbourne, and others 
which have disappeared and left no name. And so for un- 
numbered years the tide daily ebbed and flowed, and the 
reeds bent beneath the breeze, and the clouds scudded over- 
head, and the wild birds screamed, far away from the world of 
men and women, long after men and women began to wander 



4 SOUTH LONDON 

about this Island called Albion. No one took any thought 
of this marsh, any more than they heeded the marshes all 
along the lower reaches of the river ; and these were surely 
the most desolate, dreary stretches of water and mud anywhere 
in the world. Those who wish to realise what manner of 
country it was which stretched away on the north and south 
of the Thames may perhaps get some comprehension of it if 
they stand on the point at Bradwell in Essex, beside the 
ruined Chapel of St. Peter-on-the-Wall, and look out at low 
tide to east and north. 

In a previous volume dealing with another part of the 
country called London I showed to my own satisfaction, 
and, I believe, that of my readers, that long before there 
existed any London at all, except perhaps a village of a few 
fishermen with their coracles, Westminster or Thorney was 
a busy and crowded place of resort, through which the whole 
trade of the country north of the Thames passed on its way to 
Dover and the southern ports. This position, new as it was, 
and opposed to the general and traditional teaching — opposed, 
for instance, to the traditional belief of Dean Stanley — has 
never been attacked, and may be considered, therefore, as 
generally accepted. When or how the trade of Thorney began, 
to what extent it developed, we need not here inquire. Indeed, 
I know not that any fragments of fact or of tradition exist 
which would enable us to inquire. The fact itself, as will be 
immediately seen, is of the highest importance as regards the 
beginning and early history of the Southern settlements. 

The ancient way of trade, then, ran across the island called 
afterwards by the Saxons Thorney, the Isle of Bramble, now 
Westminster. All the trade of the north passed over that 
little spot, on which arose a considerable town for the recep- 
tion of the caravans. After resting a night or so at Thorney, 
the merchants went on their way. Those who travelled south, 
making for Dover, crossed over the ford, where there was 
afterwards a ferry. This ferry continued until the erection 



THE FIRST SETTLEMENTS 5 

of Westminster Bridge in the last century: the name still 
survives in Horseferry Road. After the passage of the ford, 
the travellers found themselves face to face with a mile of 
dangerous bog, marsh and swamp, through which they had 
to plod and plough their way, sinking over their knees, up to 
the middle, before they emerged upon the higher ground, 
now called Clapham Rise. To the merchants driving their 
long chains of slaves and heavily laden packhorses and mules 
from the north, this was the worst bit of the whole journey. 
Every day there were rivers to be forded, in which some of 
their slaves might get drowned or might escape ; there were 
dark woods, in which they might be attacked by hostile tribes ; 
there were hills to climb ; but nowhere, in the whole of their 
journey, was there a piece of country more difficult than this 
great swamp beyond the Ford of Thorney. They splashed 
and floundered through it, over ankles, over knees, up to the 
middle, up to the neck, in mud and muddy water. The pack- 
horses sank deep down with their loads ; they took off the 
loads and laid them on the shoulders of the slaves, who threw 
them off into the mud, and let them stay there, while they 
made a mad attempt to escape. Horse and mule ; slave and 
slave- load ; iron, lead, and skins: the merchant paid heavy 
tribute while he crossed the marshes and waded through the 
shallows of the broad tidal river. 

At some time or other, the idea occurred to an unknown 
person of engineering genius in advance of his time, that it 
might not be impossible to construct a causeway across this 
marsh ; and that such a causeway would be extremely useful 
and convenient for those who used the Thorney Fords. Per- 
haps the causeway was his own invention ; perhaps the work 
was the first causeway ever constructed in this country ; 
perhaps the inventor began on the smallest possible scale, 
with a very narrow way across the marsh to the nearest dry 
ground, which was, of course, somewhere beyond Kennington ; 
perhaps the work, colossal for the time, carried the merchants 



6 SOUTH LONDON 

and their caravans across the whole extent of the marsh — 
five miles and more — to the rising ground of Deptford or 
Greenwich, the nearest point to Dover. The causeway was 
not unlike those which now run across the Hackney Marshes; 
that is to say, it was raised so high as to be above the highest 
spring tide, about six feet above the level of the marsh. It 
was constructed by driving piles into the mud at regular 
intervals, forming a wall of timber within the piles, and filling 
up the space with gravel and shingle, brought from Chelsea 
— * Isle of Shingle ' — or from the nearest high ground, where 
is now Clapham Common. The breadth of the causeway, 
I take it, w^as about ten or twelve feet. The construction 
of the work rendered the passage across the marsh per- 
fectly easy, and greatly facilitated that part of the trade of 
the island which lay in the midland and on the north 

When was this causeway, the first step in road-making, 
constructed ? Perhaps it was a Roman work. I think, how- 
ever, that it is older than the Roman occupation ; and for 
these reasons. When London was first visited by the Romans 
it was already a flourishing city with a ' copia negotiatorum ; ' 
in other words, it had already succeeded in attracting the 
greater part of the trade which formerly passed through 
Thorney. Had the Romans built the causeway, they would 
have constructed it along a line drawn from one of the two 
old ferries to Deptford. The causeway, therefore, must have 
existed when the Romans arrived upon the scene, together 
with, as we shall see immediately, the second causeway con- 
necting the ferry with the first causeway. I dare say the 
Romans strengthened the work : turned it from a gravelled 
way, soft in bad weather, into one of their hard, firm Roman 
roads ; faced it with stone, and made it durable. If South 
London were to be stripped of all its houses, the two cause- 
v/ays would be found still, hard and firm, beneath the mass 
of accumulated soil and rubbish, as the Romans left them. 

If you draw a straight line from * Stanegate/ close to the 



THE FIRST SETTLEMENTS 7 

end of Westminster Bridge, as far as the beginning of the 
Old Kent Road, you will understand the He of the causeway. 
And this causeway, understand, was the very first interference 
of the hand of man with the marshes south of the Thames. 
It was a way across the marsh : not an embankment against 
the river, but a way. It did not keep out the tide which 
flowed in on the other side— the Battersea side : it was siippl}- 




a way across the marsh. For a long time— we cannot tell 
how long — it remained the principal way of communication 
for the trade of Britain between the north and the south, 
the midland and the south, the eastern counties and the 
south. 

Consider, next, the site of London, as it appeared to the 
merchants crossing the causeway. They saw, in the centuries 
of which no trace or memory remains, when they turned their 



8 SOUTH LONDON 

eyes northward, first a level of mud, sprinkled with little 
eyots of reed and coarse grass, then the broad river, and be- 
yond the river two streams, one fuller than the other, each in 
its own valley — that of the Walbrook was 132 feet wide at 
the present site of the Mansion House — faDing into the river ; 
a low cliff ran along the north bank, leaving stretches of marsh, 
as on the south, but, where these streams ran into the Thames, 
approaching close to the river, and actually overhanging it. 
On the river they saw numerous coracles, with fishermen 
catching salmon and every kind of fish in their nets. No 
river in the world was more plentifully stocked with fish ; 
overhead flew screaming innumerable birds — geese, ducks, 
heme — which the trappers trapped, snared, shot with sling 
and stone by the thousand. On those cliffs overhanging the 
river, the travellers by the causeway saw the huts of the fisher- 
folk. Then, perhaps, they remembered the plenty of the 
markets of Thorney ; the abundance of birds, the vast 
quantities of fish offered on those stalls. Those who were 
curious connected the coracles on the river and the birds that 
flew up from the lowlands with these markets ; they saw that 
London— 'the place or fort over the Lake' — was the settle- 
ment which furnished Thorney with a good part of her sup- 
plies. And this I verily believe to have been the real origin 
and cause of London. It was first settled by the humble folk 
who came here for the purpose of catching fish and trapping 
birds for the market of Thorney. This is a suggestion only ; 
it will be set aside, most certainly, by those who are not 
pleased with the upsetting of old theories. To those who 
are able to realise the ancient condition of things and all it 
means, the suggestion will be received, I am convinced, as 
more than a theory : it will be regarded and accepted as a 
discovery. 

Let us put it in another way. Thorney was a place of 
great resort, as I have shown in these pages already : every 
day passed into Thorney, and out of Thorney, long pro- 



THE FIRST SETTLEMENTS 



cessions or caravans of merchants with merchandise carried 
by slaves — the most valuable part of their merchandise— and 
by packhorses and mules ; they waded through the northern 
ford ; they rested for a night in one of the inns of the place : 
next day they waded through the southern ford, attained the 
causeway, and went south. Or else it was the reverse way. 
The place required a daily supply of food, and, as there were 
many travellers, a great quantity of food. 1\ you go down 




the river from Thorney, you will find that the present site of 
London, on the two hillocks rising out of the river, was the 
first and only place where men could put up huts in which to 
live while they caught fish and trapped wild birds for 
Thorney. If, therefore, the Isle of Bramble was a flourish- 
ing centre of trade long before London was a place of trade 
at all, then the original London must have been a settlement of 
fishermen and trappers who supplied the markets of Thorney. 
In course of time— we are still in prehistoric times— the 



lo SOUTH LONDON 

site of London was discovered by seamen and merchant 
adventurers exploring the rivers in their ships. It was found 
cheaper and easier and safer to carry goods to and from 
Thorney by way of sea than by land. To coast along from 
Dover to the strait between Rum — the Isle of Thanet, and 
the mainland — to pass through the strait and up the river, 
was found easier and cheaper than to undertake the costly 
and dangerous march from Dover to Thorney Ford. This 
way, then, was by many undertaken ; and so a certain part of 
the trade along the old causeway was diverted. 

The next step was the discovery of London as a port. 
There was no port at Thorney : on the site of London were 
the two natural ports of Walbrook and the mouth of the 
Fleet ; there was a high ground safer and more salubrious 
than that of Thorney ; ships began to anchor there, quays 
were erected, goods were landed ; the high road which we 
call Oxford Street was constructed to connect London with 
the highway of trade — afterwards Watling Street ; and the 
trade of London began. 

Now, if you look once more at the map of the south as it 
was, you will observe that London at its first commencement 
had no communication with any part of the world except by 
water. The first road opened was, as I have said, the con- 
nection with Watling Street ; what was the next? It was a 
connection with the high road to Dover : that connection was 
the road which we now call High Street, Borough. These 
two roads were the first communication between London and 
any other place ; all the other roads, to the north and south 
and west and east, came afterwards. It was necessary for 
London to have an open and direct connection, by land as 
well as by sea, with the then principal port of. the country. 
The High Street formed that open communication ; it began 
not far to the west of St. Saviour's Church, opposite the 
Romin Trajectus, the mediaeval ferry, now St. Mary Overies 
Dock. 



THE FIRST SETTLEMENTS 



II 



Observe, however, that we are as yet very far from 
embanking the river, or draining the marsh, or making it 
inhabitable. If you walk across Hackney Marsh by one of 
its causeways any autumnal morning, especially after rain, 
you will understand something of what Southwark looked 
like. Two high causeways crossed the marsh, of which as 
yet not a square foot had been drained or reclaimed ; yet the 
place was not so wild as it had been ; the wild birds had been 



■hi^*ai#si^.^ 










partly driven away by the noise and crowd of London, and 
by the concourse of ships sailing continually up and down. 
There was as yet no bridge. The ferry crossed the river 
backwards and forwards all day long. The causeways were 
crowded with people ; but as yet nothing on the lowlands. 
Before the marshes could be drained the river had to be 
embanked. 

No one knows when that was done. It was done, however. 
At some time or other a high earthwork was raised along the 



12 SOUTH LONDON 

north and south banks of the river, enclosing the marshes, 
converting them into pasture and arable land, and keeping 
out the tides of Thames. It was a work of the most signal 
benefit ; it was also a colossal piece of work, measured by 
hundreds of miles, for it was continued all round the islets 
and coast of Essex. It was a work requiring constant repair, 
though most of it has stood splendidly. The wall gave way, 
however, at Barking in the time of Henry the Second ; at 
Wapping in the time of Elizabeth ; at Dagenham early in the 
last century : at each of these places the repair of the wall 
was costly and difficult. The embankment left behind it a 
low-lying ground, rich and fertile ; orchards and woods began 
to grow and to flourish upon it ; yet it was still swampy in 
parts, numerous ponds lay about on it, streams wound their way 
confined in channels, and let out through the embankment at 
low tide by culverts. 

Whether the bridge came before the embankment I cannot 
decide. Yet I think that the embankment came first ; for the 
existence of Southwark--that of any part of South London — 
depended not on the bridge, but on the embankment and the 
ferry. Given, however, the embankment ; the two causeways ; 
the bridge ; two ferries — one at St. Mary Overies and the 
other lower down, opposite the Tower : given, also, direct 
communication with Dover, with Thorney— thence with the 
midlands and the north : there could not fail to arise a 
settlement or town of some kind on the south of the 
Thames. 

Let us next consider the conditions under which the town 
of Southwark began to exist and to continue for a great many 
years. 

(i) There was no wall or any means of defence, except 
the marsh which surrounded it and prohibited the approach 
of an army except along the causeway. 

(2) The ground lay low on either side the causeway, and 



THE FIRST SETTLEMENTS 13 

south of the embankment. Although the tide no longer 
ebbed and flowed among the reeds and islets of the marsh, 
yet it was covered with small ponds, some of them stagnant, 
others formed by the many streams which flowed towards the 
culverts on the embankment, through which at low tide they 
escaped into the Thames ; until some kind of drainage was 
attempted, the place caused agues and fevers for any who 
slept in its white miasma. In other words, not an embank- 
ment only, but drainage of some kind, had to be undertaken 
before life was possible on the marsh. 

(3) There were no quays, no shipping, no merchants, no 
trade, on the south side. All merchandise coming up from 
the south for export at the port of London, all merchandise 
landed at the port for the south, had to be carried across the 
bridge. 

(4) The crowds of people connected with the trade of 
London — the porters, carriers, drivers, grooms and stable- 
boys, stevedores, lightermen, sailors foreign and native, the 
employes of the merchants, their wives, women and children — 
all these people lived in London itself; they had their taverns 
and drinking shops ; their sleeping places and eating places, 
in London ; all the people employed in providing food and 
drink and sport, lived on the other side. South London had 
to be a place without trade, without noise, without disturbance 
of workmen, without broils among the sailors or fights among 
foreigners. 

(5) It stood on the south bank of a river swarming with 
fish. 

(6) The only parts on which houses could be built were 
along the line of the causeways, or along the line of the em- 
bankment. 

These were the conditions. We should expect, therefore, 
to find the place thinly inhabited ; and to find that the houses 
were all built beside or along the raised ways. We should 



14 SOUTH LONDON 

next expect to find along the causeways that the houses 
belonged to the wealthier class. 

We should expect, further, to find no sailors' or working 
men's quarters. The former because there were no ships ; the 
latter because there were no markets. Lastly, we should not 
be surprised to find the place very early occupied by inns and 
places of accommodation for those who resorted to London. 

All this was, in fact, what did take place. The Roman 
remains are numerous ; they are all found along the cause- 
ways ; the existence of a Roman cemetery shows that it was 
a place of some importance. I say some, because its very 
limited extent proves that it was never a large place. I will 
return immediately to the Roman remains. 

There was, however, one trade, one class ot workmg men 
which took up its abode along the embankment of Southwark : 
it was that of the fishermen, driven across the river by the 
growth of London. There was no room for the fishermen 
with their coracles and nets along the line of quays on the 
north side ; they wanted a place to haul up their boats, and a 
place to spread their nets, — they could not find either in the 
north ; nor would the fish be caught in waters troubled per- 
petually by oars and keels. The fisherfolk, therefore, put up 
their huts along the embankment ; for long centuries after- 
wards the fisherfolk continued to live in South London. The 
last remnant of Thames fishermen occupied, well into the 
present century, a single court in Lambeth ; it is described as 
unpaved, unglazed, unlighted, dirty, and insanitary. But the 
last salmon had been caught in the river ; the Thames fisher- 
men were by that time almost starved out of existence. I am 
sure that the south was always their place of residence ; the 
foreshore offered them what they could not find on the north 
bank. To him, hovVever, who considers the fisheries of the 
Thames, there are many points on which, for want of exact 
information, he may speculate and theorise as much as he 
pleases. For instance, later on, there were fishermen living 



THE FIRST SETTLEMENTS 15 

at Limehouse. Some of the Thames watermen lived here 
also — the legend of Avvdry the ferryman assigns to him a 
residence on the south ; their favourite place of residence, 
however, was St. Katherine's first, and Wapping afterwards. 

The Roman remains found up and down the place prove 
my assertion that the people who lived here were what we 
jhould call substantial. One need not catalogue the long list 




RELICS OF THE STONE AGE 



of Roman trouvailles ; but, to take the more important, in the 
year 18 19 there was discovered, in taking up the foundations 
of some old houses belonging to St. Thomas's Hospital, in St. 
Thomas's Street, a fine tesselated pavement, about ten feet 
below the surface of the ground. In the following year, in 
the area facing St. Saviour's Grammar School, seven or eight 
feet below the surface, there was found another, of a more 



i6 SOUTH LONDON 

elaborate design. Only a part of this was uncovered, as the 
Governors of the School forbade further investigation : it 
remains to this day still to be examined and unearthed, under 
the present potato and fruit market. At the entrance of 
King Street, at a depth of fifteen or sixteen feet, were found 
a great many Roman lamps, a vase, and other sepulchral 
deposits. And in tunnelling for a new sewer through Blackman 
Street and Snow Fields, in 1818 and 18 19, and again in 
Union Street, in 1823, numerous Roman antiquities were dis- 
covered. In Trinity Square was found a coin of Gordianus 
Africanus. In Deverill Street, south of the Dover road, other 
coins were discovered ; in St. Saviour's churchyard, a coin of 
Antoninus Pius. It has also been proved that an extensive 
Roman cemetery existed on the south of the ancient settle- 
ment. In the year 1840, when excavations were going on for 
the purpose of building a new wing to St. Thomas's Hospital, 
another tesselated pavement was disclosed, with passages and 
walls of other chambers, all built on piles, showing that the 
houses beside the causeway were thus supported in the marshy 
ground ; Roman coins and pottery were also found here. 
Another pavement was discovered on the opposite side, south 
of Winchester Palace. On the river bank, at the corner of 
Clink Street, an ancient jetty was found ; and in the new 
Southwark Street, deep down, groups of piles, pointed below, on 
which houses had been built. In many of the later buildings 
Roman tiles have been found. These remains are quite suffi- 
cient to prove that many wealthy people lived in Roman 
Southwark, and that they occupied villas built on piles beside 
the causeway. 

Since, too, from the earliest times Southwark was famous 
for its inns, and since the same conditions prevailed in the 
fourth as in the fourteenth century, it is not unreasonable to 
suppose that the people who drove those long lines of pack- 
horses laden with goods from London used Southwark as a 
place in which to deposit merchandise before taking it across 



THE FIRST SETTLEMENTS 17 

the bridge ; they halted in Southwark ; they lodged in one of 
the inns : the place was most convenient for the City ; storage 
was cheaper than on the river wharves ; for strangers, the 
place was cheerful. In one respect, that of being a halting 
place and a lodging for traders, Southwark was like Thorney 
in its palmy days — a place of entertainment for man and 
beast. There was no forum here, as in Augusta ; no place of 
meeting for merchants, such as Thames Street in Plantagenet 
times ; there was no buying and selling, but there was con- 
tinual coming and going, which made the place lively and 
cheerful. 

Such were the origins of the settlements of South London. 
An embankment, a causeway, a fishery for the wants of 
Thorney first and of Lon- 
don next ; then villas, put 
up by the better sort, at- 
tracted here, one believes, 
by the fresh air coming up 
the river with every tide, 
and by the quiet of the place. 
The settlement began quite ^ relic of the stone age 

early in the Roman occu- 
pation : this seems to be proved by the extent of the cemetery. 
The draining and drying of the low lands went on meanwhile 
gradually, gardens and orchards taking the place of the 
former marsh. 

The place has always, save at rare intervals, been entirely 
defenceless. The Pax Romana protected it. Remember 
that London itself was not walled till the latter part of the 
fourth century. Why should it be ? For more than three 
hundred years, for ten generations, the City knew no wars 
and feared no invader. The * Count of the Saxon Shore ' 
beat back, and kept back, the pirates of Norway and Den- 
mark ; the Legions beat back the marauders of Scotland and 

C 




i8 SOUTH LONDON 

Ireland. South wark, like the City its neighbour, needed no 
wall and asked for no defence. 

Twice, before the arrival of the East Saxons, we get a 
glimpse in history of South London. The first is the rout of 
the usurper, the Emperor Allectus, after the battle of Clapham 
Common. 

Towards the close of the third century the succession of 
usurpers who sprang up everywhere in the outlying portions 
of the Empire contained six who came from Britain. What 
effect these movements had upon the security of South London 
we have no means of learning. The history, however, of 
Carausius and his successor Allectus affords material for re- 
flection. The former, who was of Belgian origin, rose to be 
the Count of the Saxon Shore — in other words. Admiral of 
the Roman Fleet. In this capacity he kept the seas free 
from pirates ; enriched himself, became famous for his courage 
and his generosity ; usurped the title of Caesar, fought with 
and defeated the fleets of Maximian, and reigned in Britain 
for seven years. His headqua^rters were Boulogne and South- 
hampton ; near the latter place — at Bittern — is still seen the 
quay at which his ships were moored. His rule, of which we 
know little, was certainly strong and firm. Coins exist in 
great numbers of Carausius. They represent his arrival : 
' Expectate, veni '— ' Come, thou long-expected ! ' Then his 
triumph : 'Shout 10 ten times.' He held gladiatorial sports 
at London ; he appointed a British senate. Then came the 
time when he must fight or die. Like the King of the Grove, 
the Usurper held his throne on that condition. Carausius, for 
some unknown reason, would not fight when the chance was 
offered — therefore he died. Another King of the Grove, 
Allectus by name, one of his officers, killed him and reigned 
in his stead. Then he, too, had to fight for crown and life. 
He accepted the challenge ; he awaited with an army of 
Franks and Britons the arrival of the Roman forces sent to 
quell him : he awaited them in London. When the enemy 



THE FIRST SETTLEMENTS 



19 



drew near, he led out his men across the Bridge, and gave 
battle to the Roman general, Asclepiodotus, on the wild heath 
south of London, immediately beyond the rising ground — we 
nowcall the place Clapham Common — and there he fell bravely 
fighting. He had enjoyed the purple for three years. Per- 
haps, when he crossed the Bridge, conscious that he was going 
to meet his fate — either to continue an Emperor for another 
spell or to die — he reflected that for such a splendid three 




RELICS OF THE BRONZE AGE 



years' run it was worth while to risk, and even to lose, his life 
at the end. 

This is, I say, the first glimpse we get of South London 
in history. We see the army marching across the Bridge 
and along the Causeway, shouting and singing. We see 
them a few hours later, flying from the field, rushing head- 
long over the Causeway, through the lines of villas to the 
Bridge. The terrified people, those who lived in the villas, 



20 SOUTH LONDON 

are running over the Bridge after them. Once across the 
Bridge, the soldiers found that there was left in the City 
neither order nor authority. They therefore began to sack 
and pillage the rich houses, and to murder the inhabitants. 
Remember that all over the Roman Empire none were 
permitted to carry arms except the soldiers. Therefore 
there could be no defence. The pillage went on until the 
victorious general had got his army— or some of it — across 
the Bridge. How long it would take to bring up his troops, 
whether the Bridge was held by the Franks, whether the 
defeated army made any organised opposition, we know not. 
All we are told is that the Roman soldiers fought hand to 
hand with those of the dead Usurper in the streets of London, 
and that the latter were all massacred. 

In the year 457 we get a second glimpse of Southwark in 
the flight of another defeated host. The Britons had gone 
forth to fight the Saxon invaders ; they met the enemy — 
Hengist and .^sc his son — at " Crecganford " — Cragsford : 
they were defeated ; four thousand of them were killed ; they 
fled ; they never stopped until they reached London Bridge ; 
we can see them flying bareheaded, without weapons, along 
the Causeway and through the narrow gates of the Bridge. 
Alas ! the old villas along the Causeway are deserted and in 
ruins ; the place has been desolate for many years — since the 
Saxons began to swarm about the country ; the former 
residents, if they are living still, are behind the walls ; and 
their sons are carrying on the war which is to last two 
hundred long years, and to leave its memories of hatred 
behind it for fifteen hundred years at least. The gardens are 
grown over, the orchards are neglected, the inns are empty 
and ruinous. 

Before long there falls the silence of death upon the 
walled City and the Bridge and the settlements of the South. 
All alike are deserted : the tide idly laps the piles of the 
rotting Bridge ; it rolls along the empty wharves, bearing no 



THE FIRST SETTLEMENTS 21 

keel upon its bosom ; there is no boat on the river, there is 
no smoke from any house ; there is no Hfe, no sign of Hfe, in 
the place which had formerly been so crowded and so busy. 
The timbered face of the embankment gave way and 
crumbled into the river ; the Causeway was eaten by the tides 
here and there ; the low grounds once more became a marsh, 
and the wild birds returned, undisturbed, to their former haunts. 

I have elsewhere [^ London,' ch. i.) described the natural 
reasons which led to this desertion of the City. It appears 
to us strange and almost impossible that a great city should 
be so utterly deserted. Where, however, are the cities of 
Tadmor, of Tyre, of Carthage ? Where are the great cities 
of Asia Minor ? The conqueror not only took the City and 
killed some of the people ; he cut off the supplies, and there- 
fore forced thenj to go. This was most certainly the case 
with London. Roger of Wendover, it is true, tells us that in 
the year 462 the Saxons took possession of London, and then 
successively of York, Lincoln, and Winchester, committing 
great devastation. ' They fell on the natives in every quarter, 
like wolves on sheep forsaken by their shepherds ; the 
churches and all the ecclesinstical buildings they levelled with 
the ground ; the priests they slew at the altars ; the holy 
scriptures they burned with fire ; the tombs of the holy 
martyrs they covered with mounds of earth ; the clergy who 
escaped the slaughter fled with the relics of the saints to the 
caves and recesses of the earth, to the woods and deserts and 
the crags of the mountains.' 

I do not suppose that Roger of Wendover (he died in 
1237) had access to documents of the time. I would rather 
incline to the belief that, given certain undoubted facts of 
battle, murder, and sacrilege, he presented the world with a 
little embroidery of his own. An Assault on London is, 
however, possible ; in which case the desertion of the City 
would be only hastened. With the ruin and desolation of 
Augusta came also the ruin of the southern settlement. 



22 SOUTH LONDON 

This silence — this desolation — lasted some hundred years. 
Then the men of Essex — the East Saxons — came down, a few 
at a time, and took possession of the deserted City ; the 
merchants began timidly to bring their ships again with goods 
for trade ; the East Saxons learned the meaning of bargains ; 
Augusta was dead, but London revived. The City preserved 
its ancient name, but the southern settlement lost its name. 
We know not what the Romans or the Britons called it, but 
the Saxons called it Southwark. And they repaired the 
embankment and restored the ancient causeways, and cleared 
away the ruins. 

Another point of difference : in London the new streets, 
laid out without rule or order, grew by degrees ; they did not 
follow the old Roman streets, which were quite obliterated 
and utterly forgotten — one cannot imagine a more decisive 
proof of complete desertion and ruin. In Southwark, on the 
other hand, the streets remained the same — they were the 
two causeways and the embankment — because none others 
were then possible. High Street, Borough, is still, as it 
always has been, the ancient causeway connecting the new 
port of London with the Dover road. 

Between the years 600 and 1000 Southwark suffered the 
vicissitudes which must happen in a period of continual 
warfare to an undefended suburb. In times of peace, when 
trade was possible, the place was what the Icelander Snorro 
Thirlesen calls an * emporium.' All the merchandise carried 
to London from the south for export lay there waiting to be 
carried across the quays : the merchants themselves found 
accommodation there. But we cannot believe that when the 
Danish fleets brought their fierce warriors to the very walls of 
London, Southwark — or any other settlement — would con- 
tinue to exist unfortified. That the place remained w^ithout 
a wall, except for certain temporary walls put up by the 
Danes, proves that it was regarded by itself as of small 
importance. This is also proved by another fact — namely, 



THE FIRST SETTLEMENTS 23 

that the place was always occupied without defence. When, 
for instance, the Danes held London for twelve years, leaving 
it a wreck and a ruin, can we believe that any people re- 
mained in Southwark? In times of peace the fishermen lived 
here for greater convenience of their work ; London by this 
time was impossible for them, because it was walled all along 
the river side. If peace was prolonged, inns were set up for 
the merchants : people built houses along the causeway. 
When war began again, and the enemy once more appeared, 
Southwark was again abandoned. This is the history of 
South London for a thousand years — alternate occupation 
and abandonment. 

There exists a very singular heresy concerning Southwark. 
I would deal with it tenderly, because one, if not more, of 
the heretics is a personal friend of my own. It is that the 
site of the first or original London was on the South ; that 
Roman London stood on the site of Southwark ; and that, at 
some time or other, there was a transference of sites, the 
whole of Roman London migrating to the other side. It is 
even maintained that the name of Walworth proves that 
there was once a wall round the city of the south. To me 
the name of Walworth indicates the proximity of the high 
causeway running through its midst. The consideration of 
the site — the marshy, wet, and unwholesome site— is quite 
sufficient for me. At no time, not even in the time of the 
Lake dwellers, have marshes been selected by choice for the 
building of cities. Before the Embankment and the Cause- 
way, the South of London was impossible for the residence 
of man. 

The transference of sites is a theory often called in to 
account for, and make possible, other theories. Thus, the 
late James Fergusson invented the transference of sites in 
order to bolster up certain theories of his own on the Holy 
Places of Jerusalem. Here, however, there is no theory : 
only a statement by a geographer evidently ignorant of the 



24 SOUTH LONDON 

boundaries of an obscure province of a district in a distant 
country which he had never seen. London, Ptolemy said, 
was in Kent All the Roman remains, as we have seen, are 
found by the Causeway and the Embankment — there never 
could have been any wall ; and, indeed, the only answer that 
is required to such a theory is to point to the natural 
conditions of the site. Is it conceivable that people would 
settle themselves in a marsh when they had firm and dry 
ground across the river? 



25 



CHAPTER II 

EARLY HISTORY 

SOUTHWARK, then, had no reason for existence at all except 
for its connection with London by bridge and ferry, and 
especially by bridge. Before the Ferry and the Bridge there 
was no Southwark. The history of Southwark is closely 
connected with the Bridge. It was on the south end of the 
Bridge that all the fighting took place, London very gene- 
rously handing over her battles to her daughter of the south. 
I propose, in this chapter, to discourse about the Bridge and 
one or two of its earlier battles. 

It is sometimes stated, confidently, that before the Bridge 
there was the Ferry. Why ? To carry people across the 
river and * dump ' them down in the marsh ? But people had 
no business in the marsh. First came the Bridge and the 
Causeway to connect it with the Dover road. Then traffic 
began to cross the Bridge and to meet the Dover road. But 
as yet there was no ferry. Then came the Embankment, and 
the appearance of houses along the Causeway and on the 
Embankment. As the trade of London increased, so South- 
wark— I would we had the Roman name — increased in pro- 
portion. Inns were created for the convenience of merchants, 
trade was drawn from Thorney on the south by the Bridge, 
just as it was diverted on the north by the military way 
connecting the great high road with London. When the 
Causeway was always filled with caravans and long trains of 
heavily laden packhorses ; when the inns were crowded with 
merchants and their slaves ; when the Bridge was all day 



26 SOUTH LONDON 

covered with passengers and carriers ; then the Ferry was 
demanded as a quicker and an easier way of getting across. 
Two Ferries, there were ; perhaps more. One of these ran 
from Dowgate Dock to St Mary Overies ; the other crossed 
the river lower down, nearer the Tower. So things remained 
for nearly two thousand years — say, from A.D. lOO to A.D. 
1750. If a man wanted to get across the river, he did not 
make his way to London Bridge, and painfully walk across 
amid the carriers and the caravans, the plunging horses and 
the droves of oxen ; he stepped into the boat and was ferried 
across. We must not look on the Bridge as a means of getting 
across the river for the people : it was not ; it was the means 
of conveying merchandise to and fro ; it was a construction 
most important for military purposes ; it was a barrier to 
prevent a hostile fleet from getting higher up the river ; but, 
for the ordinary passenger, the boat was the quicker and the 
easier means of conveyance. 

When was the Bridge built ? It is impossible to say. It 
was not there A.D. 61, when Queen Boadicea's troops sacked 
the City and murdered the people. It was there when Allectus 
led his troops out to fight the Roman legions. It was there 
very early in the Roman occupation, as is proved by the 
quantities of Roman coins of the four centuries of their tenure 
found in the bed of the river on the site of the old Bridge. It 
is also proved by the fact that Southwark was a settlement of 
the wealthier class, who could not have lived in a place abso- 
lutely without supplies, had there been no bridge. We may 
take any time we please for the construction of the Bridge, 
so long as it is quite early — say, before the second century. 

The building of the Bridge can be arrived at with such 
great certainty that I have no hesitation in presenting a 
drawing of it. As this Bridge has never before been figured 
by the pencil of any artist, it will be well for me to indicate 
the steps by which its reconstruction has been made possible. 

The Britons themselves were quite unable to construct a 



EARLY HISTORY 



27 



bridge of any kind, unless in the primitive methods observed 
at Post Bridge and Two Bridges, on Dartmoor, by a slab of 
stone laid across two boulders. The work, therefore, was 
certainly undertaken by Roman engineers. We have, in the 
next place, to inquire what kind of bridge was built at that 
time by the Romans. They built bridges of wood and of 
stone ; many of these stono- bridges still remain, in other cases 
the pieces of hewn stone still remain. The Bridge over 
the Thames, however, was of wood. This is proved by the 




fact that, had it been of the solid Roman construction in 
stone, the piers would be still remaining ; also by the fact that 
London had to be contented with a wooden bridge till the 
year 11 76, when the first bridge of stone was commenced. 
Considerations as to the comparative insignificance of London 
in the first century, as to the absence of stone in the neigh- 
bourhood, and as to the plentiful supply of the best wood in 
the world from the forests north of the City, confirm the 
theory that the Bridge was built of wood. We have only, 



28 SOUTH LONDON 

therefore, to learn how Roman engineers built bridges of wood 
elsewhere, in order to know how they built a bridge of wood 
over the Thames. And this we know without any doubt. 

First : they drove piles into the bed of the river — not up- 
right piles, but inclined at an angle ; they placed two piles 
side by side, and opposite to these two more ; they connected 
the two piles by ties and the opposite piles with them by 
transverse girders. Across them they laid a huge beam — a 
tree roughly hewn, and across these beams they laid the floor 
of stout planks. The weight of beams and planks and the 
parapet put up afterwards, with perhaps other planks for 
greater safety, pressed down the piles and held them in place. 
To prevent the current from carrying them away, each double 
•pair of piles was protected by a ' starling,' formed by driving 
upright smaller piles in front at the piers and enclosing a 
space, which was filled up with stones, so that the force of the 
current was not felt by the great piles 

In this way the Roman Bridge was built. You will 
understand it better from the drawing, which shows the Bridge 
taken from the Embankment near the present site of St. Mary 
Overies Church. The gate is the river-gate in the long 
straight wall which ran along the bank of the river. The 
wall, it is obvious, must have been pierced at several points 
for the convenience of trade and the quays : one supposes 
that these posterns cculd be easily closed and defended. 
This river-wall, we shall presently see, was standing in the 
time of Cnut. Some parts of it stood until the building of 
the stone Bridge in the last quarter of the twelfth century. 
The Roman Bridge was also the Saxon Bridge, the Danish 
Bridge, and the Norman Bridge. 

In course of time the river-wall was removed, bit by bit : 
its foundations still lie under the pavement and the warehouses. 
The gate was altered. I do not suppose there was much 
of the original structure left when the East Saxons took 
possession of the City after a hundred years of desertion and 



EARLY HISTORY 



29 



decay. But a gate of some kind there must always have 
been. The breadth of the Bridge allowed, according to Fitz- 
Stephen, two carts to pass each other. That means about 
sixteen feet Like the very ancient stone bridges of Saintes 
and Avignon, the Bridge was from sixteen to twenty feet 
broad. The river-gate stood at the south end of Botolph 
Lane, some seventy feet east of the present Bridge : the 
second Bridge — the first of stone — stood betvv^een the first 
and third, having St. Magnus' Church on the north and St. 
Olave's on the south side ; together with its own chapel of 




St. Thomas on the Bridge itself, to place it under the special 
protection of the saints most dear to London hearts. 

The Bridge, and especially the south end of it, was a field 
of battle whenever the way of war came near to London. The 
first glimpse, as we have seen, which we catch of it is when 
Allectus and his forces crossed the river by the Bridge to give 
battle to the legions of Asclepiodotus on the Heath beyond 
the rising ground. A few hours later, on the same day, their 
columns routed, their general dead, we see the defeated troops 
once more flying across the narrow Bridge. There was no 
one to lead them, or they could have held the Bridge against 
all comers ; there was no drawbridge to pull up, or they could 
have kept the Romans out by that expedient. One wonders 



so SOUTH LONDON 

if all their officers were lying dead on the field, with Allectus, 
for the troops, who were Franks for the most part, seem to 
have left the Bridge without a guard, and the river-gate 
wide open, while they melted into little companies, who ran 
about the City pillaging the houses and murdering the un- 
fortunate people. 

By the Roman law the people were unarmed : no one 
could carry arms except the soldiers. The law was a safe- 
guard against rebellion ; but it opened the door to military 
revolts, and it destroyed the military spirit among the civil 
population— always a most dangerous thing for a State. The 
Roman legions poured into the City ; they found Allectus' 
Franks at their murderous work, and they cut them down. If 
it is true, as stated by the historians, that they were all cut off 
to a man, London must have been a horrible shambles. 

The second glimpse of the Bridge is also that of a routed 
army flying across the narrow way to seek shelter between the 
walls. It is in the year 467. They are the Britons flying 
from their defeat in Kent. After this there is silence — absolute 
silence, leaving not so much as a whisper, a tradition, or a 
legend ; the silence that can only mean desertion — silence for 
a hundred and fifty years. 

When London reappears, it is in humble guise : the City 
has shrunk within her ancient walls ; and these have fallen 
into decay. .Southwark no longer exists. We learn that the 
Bridge has been repaired, because there is easy communication 
with Canterbury. Yet in the Danish troubles there is no 
fighting on or for the Bridge. Why ? simply because there 
were no defenders of the Bridge on the south. In 819 and 
in 857 the Danes entered London and' slaughtered numbers,' 
apparently without opposition. In 872 they occupied London, 
apparently without opposition. We hear of no siege, of no 
fighting on the Bridge ; of no shelter behind the walls. Yet 
there was a defence at York, at Reading, at Nottingham — 
behind the walls. Why not in London ? Because in London 



EARLY HISTORY 31 

the walls, 5,500 yards in length, had become too long to man, 
or to defend, or to repair. The Danes ran into the City 
through the shattered gate ; they leaped over the broken wall. 
What happened to the people ; what street fighting was 
carried on, what slaughter, what plunder, what horrible treat- 
ment of women - we may understand from the page of the 
historian Saxo relating other sacks and sieges by the gentle 
Dane. As for the trade, the wealth, the name and fame of 
London— they all perished together. It was a ruined city, 
with a miserable population of craftsmen enslaved by the 
Dane, that Alfred reconquered. The Bridge itself was broken 







down ; the settlements of the south were deserted : even the 
fishermen had left the Thames above and below London, and 
sought for safety in the retired creeks and safe backwaters 
along the coast of Essex. The London fisherman sallied 
forth in his coracle from the marshes behind Canvey Island, 
and from the slopes of Hadleigh. Alfred repaired the walls 
and the Bridge and rebuilt the gates. Something like peace 
was restored to the City and order to the country. Then 
trade, which welcomes the first appearance of safety, began 
again. If the merchant feared the pirates of the Foreland, he 
could march across the Bridge to Dover ; or he could land at 
Dover and march across Kent to the Bridge. Then the old 



52 SOUTH LONDON 

settlements on the south Causeway were rebuilt and new inns 
sprang up, and Southwark began again. 

A hundred years of rest from the ' army,' as the ' Chronicle ' 
calls the Danes, gave Southwark time to grow. It is spoken 
of by the Danish historian as an ' emporium.' I understand 
from the use of this word that the trade of London was 
carried on principally by way of Dover, because the seas were 
swarming with pirates. Southwark was a halting-place and a 
resting-place, such as Thorney had been of old. 

The prosperity of the settlement, however, received 
another blow when the Danes once more, mindful of their 
former victories, sailed up the river with hope of again taking 
London. Southwark was defenceless. There was never any 
wall about the place : its population was migratory. When 
the enemy appeared the people of Southwark retreated across 
the Bridge. The Danes landed, pillaged, and burned ; they 
then went away. Some of the people returned, especially the 
fishermen, whose huts were easily repaired. When, however, 
the attacks became more frequent, and the Danes appeared 
every year, Southwark was deserted. But in London itself 
they were grievously disappointed ; for their grandfathers 
had told them that it was a feeble and a helpless place, 
perfectly incapable of resistance, with walls through whose 
wide gaps a whole army could march ; and they fondly 
expected to find it in the same condition. But it had been 
growing, unseen by them, in population and resource and 
power. 

In the year 992 the City showed its strength in a manner 
which was extremely startling to the Danes ; for it equipped 
a great fleet, manned the ships with stout-hearted citizens, 
sent the ships down the river, met the Danish fleet, engaged 
them, and routed them with great slaughter. Two years 
later they returned, eager for revenge — the revenge which 
they vainly sought in six successive sieges. The army on 
this occasion consisted of Norsemen and Danes in alliance, 



EARLY HISTORY 



33 



under the two kings, Olaf of Norway and bwegen of Denmark. 
They were firmly resolved to take the City : with their 
warriors they would attack it by land, with their ships by 
water. They had no ladders ; they had no knowledge of 
mining ; they had no battering-rams ; they could, and doubt- 
less did, endeavour to break down the gates with trunks of 
trees ; but the gates were well manned and well defended. On 
the river-side one half of the town kept open their communi- 
cations ; the other half were exposed to the arrows of the 
sailors, but had arrows of their own. How long the siege 




SHIPS, BAYEUX TAPESTRY 

lasted I know not ; the ' Chronicle,' all too brief, tells us only 
that the enemy discovered that they could not prevail, and 
that they withdrew. 

The appearance of a Danish or Norwegian fleet, whose 
ships were models to King Alfred when he founded the 
English Navy, must not be gathered from the drawings of 
the Bayeux tapestry, where the ships are conventional in 
treatment. We have, fortunately, one actual surviving spe- 
cimen of a ship of King Olafs time. It is the famous ship 
of Gokstad, in Norway. Look at the two pictures on this 
and folio >ving page. One is taken from the tapestry, the other 

D 



34 



SOUTH LONDON 



is the Gokstad vessel. The former carries about a dozen men 
rather high out of the water, with straight sides, and would 
certainly capsize. The latter is a long, light, swift vessel, 
built for speed, and able to sail over quite shallow water ; she 
is constructed on lines which, for beauty or for usefulness, 
cannot be surpassed even at the present day : she rides 
lightly, drawing very little water. She is clinker built ; the 
planks overlying each other are fastened with iron bolts, 
riveted and clinched on the inside. She is built of oak ; her 




length from stem to stern, over all, is 78 feet ; her keel is 
66 feet ; her breadth is 16^ feet ; her depth is no more than 
4 feet ; the third plank from the top is twice as thick as the 
others ; she is pierced by portholes for as many oars. The 
ship is pointed at both ends ; she is steered by a rudder 
attached to the side of the stern ; on each side hang 16 shields ; 
she carried 64 rowers, and probably as many men besides. The 
decorations lavished on the ship were profuse. The figure-head 
was gilt, the stern was gilt, the shields were gilt ; the ships 



EARLY HISTORY 35 

were painted in long lines of bright colour — you can see that in 
the ships of the Bayeux tapestry. The whole of the vessel — 
bows, figure-head, gunwale, stern-post — were covered with 
carvings ; the sails were decorated with embroideries ; the 
mast was gilt. Verily the ' fleet shone as if it were on fire.' 

Such were the ships which came up, nearly a hundred in 
company, with Olaf and Swegen. Low in the water they 
came, the oars sweeping in a long, measured swish of the 
water : swiftly flying up the broad river, the sunshine lighting 
up the colours and the gilding of the ships, and the bright 
arms of the company on board. It was a company of tall 
and strong men ; young, every one, with long fair hair and 
blue eyes. From the grey walls of the town, from the Bridge 
on the river, the citizens saw the splendid array rushing up to 
destroy them if they could. At the Bridge, the foremost 
stop : they go no farther ; those behind cry ' Forward ! ' and 
those in front cry ' Back ! ' The Bridge would suffer none to 
pass ; and so, jammed together, perhaps lashed together, as 
when Olaf was to meet his death five years later in his last 
splendid sea-fight, they essayed to take the city by assault. 
They shot arrows with red-hot heads over the walls, to strike 
and set light to the thatch ; they shot arrows at the citizens 
on the walls ; they tried to scale the piles of the Bridge. If 
they could get within the City, these splendid savages, there 
would be slaughter and pillage, ravishing of women, firing of 
the thatch, the roar of flames and the clashing of weapons, 
and next day silence, long teams of slaves and of treasure 
lifted into the ships, bows turned outward ; and the fleet 
would leave behind it a London once more desolate and naked 
and forlorn, as when the East Saxon entered towards the end 
of the sixth century. It was a day of fate, and big with destiny 
Had the Danes succeeded, we know not what might have been 
the history of London and of England. 

When they were beaten off, the people of Southwark went 
back to their homes, and the daily business of life was carried 

D2 



36 SOUTH LONDON 

on as usual. We may observe that if there had been a 
permanent settlement here — a town of any importance — they 
would have built a wall to protect it But there was never 
any wall ; the place could be approached by the Causeway or 
by the river ; no one ever at any time thought of protecting 
Southwark. 

But now a worse time fell upon the place, as well as upon 
London. The whole country, almost unresisting, was ravaged 
by the Danes : Swegen came over and proved the English 
weakness, and saw that time would help him, if he waited. 
Time did help him, and famine helped him as well. 

In 1009 occurred the second siege of London, this time by 
Thurkitel, who afterwards entered into the service of Ethelred. 
He ravaged Kent and Essex, took up his winter quarters on 
the Thames, apparently at Greenwich, and laid siege to the 
City — but in vain. It is of course obvious that without 
ladders, mines, battering-rams, or wooden towers, the City 
could never be taken. The people beat him off at every 
assault with great loss. It seems as if the whole valour in 
England was at the moment concentrated in London. 

The third siege of London was in 1013, when Swegen 
returned. This time, mindful of his former failure, and of 
Thurkitel's failure, he left his ships at Southampton ; he 
marched upon London by way of Winchester, which he took on 
the way ; but although he came up from the south, he did not 
attack from the south, nor did he encamp on the south. The 
reason is obvious : the Causeway was narrow ; to fight on the 
Bridge was to engage a mere handful of men ; there was no place 
except that and the Causeway. Swegen, therefore, passed over 
the ford of Westminster, and attacked the walls on the north side. 
Within the City was Thurkitel, now in the English service ; 
by his help or counsel, the Londoners drove Swegen off the 
field. He withdrew. But all England rapidly submitted to 
his arms ; therefore London, too, seeing that it was useless to 
hold out alone, sent hostages and submitted It is reported 



EARLY HISTORY 



37 



that they were terrified at the threats of Swegen : he would 
cut off their hands and their feet ; he would tear out their eyes ; 
he would burn and destroy — and so forth. But these promises 
were the common garnish of besiegers ; they no more 
frightened the defenders of London at this time than they 
frightened the defenders of any other city. 

The end of Swegen, as everybody knows, was that 
St. Edmund of Bury killed him for doubting his saintliness. 

We now come to the three successive sieges by King Cnut. 
The expedition with which he proposed to reduce London 




w^^^mw0^Bij>iiim'- 



SKETCH MAP 



was far finer and more powerful than that of Olaf and Swegen. 
The poetic description of it says that the ships were counted by 
hundreds ; that they were manned by an army among whom 
there was never a slave, or a freeman son of a slave, or one 
unworthy man, or an old man. Freeman asks what nobility 
meant if all were nobles ? A strange question for one so 
learned ! The nobles of Denmark were simply the conquer- 
ing race ; nobility consisted in free birth, and in descent from 
the conquering race, not the conquered : it was not necessarily 
a small caste ; it might possibly include the larger part of the 
people. 



38 SOUTH LONDON 

Cnut anchored off Greenwich and prepared for his siege. 
First of all, he resolved that the Bridge should no longer bar 
the way. He therefore cut a trench round the south of the 
Bridge, by means of which he drew some of his ships to the 
other side of it. He then cut another trench round the whole 
of the v/all. In this way he hoped to shut in the City and cut 
off all supplies : if he could not take the place by storm, he 
would starve it out. There are no details of the siege, but as 
Cnut speedily abandoned the hope of success and marched off 
to look after Edmund, his investmentof the City was certainly 
not a success. 

He met Edmund and fought two battles with him ; with 
what result history has made us acquainted. He then returned 
and resumed the siege of London. Edmund fought him 
again, and made him once more raise the siege. When 
Edmund went into Wessex to gather new forces, Cnut began 
a third siege, in which, also, ' by God's help,' he made no pro- 
gress. 

In twenty years, therefore, the City of London was besieged 
six times, and not once taken. 

Antiquaries have written a good deal on the colossal 
nature of the canal constructed by Cnut ; they have looked 
for traces of it in the south of London before it was covered 
over by houses ; they have gone as far afield as Deptford in 
search of these traces ; they have even found them ; and to 
the present day every writer who has mentioned the canal 
speaks of it and thinks of it with the respect due to a colossal 
work. Freeman himself called it a ' deep ditch.' How deep 
it was, how long it was, how broad it was, I am going to 
explain. 

It was in the year 1756 that the painstaking historian, 
William Maitland, F.R.S., announced that he had been so 
fortunate as to light upon the course of the long-lost trench of 
King Cnut. 

He had found certain evidence, he said, of its course, in a 



EARLY HISTORY 39 

direction nearly east and west from the then * New Dock' of 
Rotherhithe to the river at the end of Chelsea Reach, through 
Vauxhall Gardens. The proofs were, first, certain depressions 
in the ground ; next, the discovery of oaken planks and piles 
driven into the ground for what he thought was the northern 
fence of the canal, near the Old Kent Road ; and next a 
report that, in 1694, when the wet dock of Rotherhithe was 
constructed, a quantity of hazel, willow, and other branches 
were found pointing northward, with stakes to keep them in 
position, forming a kind of water fence, such as, it is said, is still 
in use in Denmark. It will be seen that Mr. Maitland's theory 
has but a small basis of evidence, yet it seems to have been 
generally accepted — partly, I suppose, because it was so 
colossal. 

The canal thus cut would actually be a little over four 
miles and a half in length. Another writer, seeing the 
difficulties of so great a work, suggests another course. He 
would start from the site of the New Dock, Rotherhithe, and 
end on the other side of London Bridge, a course of only 
three and three-quarter miles ! 

Let us ask ourselves why it should be a ' deep ' ditch ; why 
it should be a long ditch ; why it should be a broad ditch. 

Wherever Cnut began his trench, whether at Rotherhithe 
or nearer the Bridge, he would have the same preliminary 
difficulties to encounter : that is to say, he would have to 
cut through the Embankment of the river at either end, and 
he would have to cut through the Causeway in the middle. 
In these cuttings he would perhaps have to take down two 
or three houses, huts, or cabins, all deserted, because the 
people had all run across the Bridge for safety at the first 
sight of the Danes, if there were any people at the time 
living in Southwark — which I doubt. 

We may, further, take it for granted that Cnut had officers 
of sense and experience on whom he could depend for carry- 
ing out his canal in a workmanlik«e manner. A people who 



40 



SOUTH LONDON 



could build such perfect ships would certainly not waste 
time and labour in constructing a trench which would be 
any longer or deeper or wider than was absolutely necessary. 
Now the shortest canal possible would be that in which 
he was just able to drag his vessels round without destroying 
the banks. In other words, if a circular canal began at C B, 
and if we drew an imaginary circle round the middle of the 
canal, what was required was that the chord D F, forming a 




tangent to the middle circle, should be at least as long as the 
longest vessel. Now (see diagram) — 

AD2-AE2=DE2. 

If r is the radius, AD and 2a the breadth BC, and 2b the 
length of the chord DF — 



r^ — {r—af = P .' . r- 



2a 



This represents the length of the radius in terms of the 
length and breadth of the largest vessel in the fleet, and is 
therefore the smallest radius possible for getting the ships 
through. Now, the ship of Gokstad, already described, was 
undoubtedly one of the finest of the vessels used by Danes 
and Normans. The poets certainly speak of larger ships, 



EARLY HISTORY 



41 



but as a marvel. Nothing is said about Cnut bringing over 
ships of very great size. Now, that vessel was 66 feet in 
length, considering the keel, which is all we need consider ; 
16 J feet in breadth, and 4 feet in depth. She drew very 
little water ; therefore a breadth of canal less than the breadth 
of the vessel was enough. Let us make the chord 70 feet in 
length, so that ^=35. Let us make the breadth of the canal 
1 2 feet. Therefore 2a=i2or a = 6 and r= 1 05 feet very nearly. 
Measuring, therefore, 105 feet on either side of London 
Bridge, we arrive at a possible commencement of Cnut's 
work. That is to say, if he made a semicircular canal, in 
that case the length of the canal would be 320 yards, which 




THE GOKSTAD SHIP 



is certainly an improvement on four miles and a half, or even 
three miles and three-quarters. 

There is, however, more to consider. Why should Cnut 
make a semicircle when an arc would serve his turn ? All 
he had to do was to draw an arc of a circle with the radius 
just found, to clear any obstacles in the way of approach to 
the Bridge, and use that arc for his canal. This is most 
certainly what he did : I am quite certain he adopted this 
method, because it was the only sensible thing to do. He 
would thus get off with a canal about fifty yards long, of 
which the only difficulty would be the cutting through the 
Embankment and the Causeway. 

What would be the depth of the canal ? Look at this 
section of the Gokstad ship. With her breadth of sixteen 



42 SOUTH LONDON 

feet, she had only four feet in depth ; without her company and 
crew, and their arms and provisions, she would thus draw no 
more than a few inches — certainly not more than eight 
inches or so. Freeman's deep canal therefore comes to eight 
inches at the most. But there is still another consideration 
which lessened the labour materially. The ground behind 
the Embankment was a little lower than the river at high 
tide : the Danes, therefore, had only to construct a low 
wooden containing-wall of timber on each side in order to 
make their canal without excavating an inch. When that 
was done, the cutting of the Embankment let in the tide and 
did the rest. In this simple manner do we reduce Cnut's 
colossal work of a deep canal, four miles and a half long, into 
a piece of construction and demolition which would take a 
large body of men no more than a few hours. 

If, however, there actually was any digging to be done, 
we must remember that the ground was a level ; that there 
were no stones or rocks in the way, and that it consisted of 
a soft black humus^ the result of ages of successive growths 
of sedge and coarse grass, formerly washed twice a day by 
the brackish waters of a tidal river. The object of the canal 
once attained, the ships drawn back again, Cnut, of course, 
left the place to be repaired by any who pleased. The 
broken Embankment let in the tide ; the broken Causeway 
cut off any approach to the river ; but Southwark was de- 
serted. When things settled down a little, workmen were 
sent across from London, and the broken places were repaired. 
Then all traces of the canal disappeared. 

Thirty-six years later, in 1052, Earl Godwine arrived at 
Southwark with a fleet and an army. He had no difficulty 
in passing the Bridge ; he waited till flood-tide, and then 
sailed through ' on the south side.' It is quite impossible to 
explain this statement, or to make it agree with the difficulty 
felt by Cnut. The Bridge may have sustained some damage ; 
there may have been a drawbridge ; or Godwine's ships may 



EARLY HISTORY 



43 



have been smaller : one knows nothing. I merely state the 
fact as the Chronicler gives it. 

One more glimpse of the Bridge from Southvvark before 
we pass on to more modern times. 

After Hastings, William marched northwards. Arrived 
.near London, he advanced to Southwark, where he found the 
Bridge closed to him — closed, I believe, by knocking away 
some of the upper beams. This, of course, he expected ; his 




friends within the City, of whom he had many, kept him ac- 
quainted with the changing currents of popular opinion. It 
is commonly stated that the citizens were terrified by the 
sight of Southwark in flames at his command. Southwark 
in flames ! A few fishermen's huts were all that remained of 
the suburb, whose population since the time of the Pax 
Romana had been so precarious and so changeful. Five 
hundred years of battle, war between kings and tribes, in- 
vasion and ravage by Dane and Norseman, had not left of 



44 SOUTH LONDON 

Southwark, once so beautiful a suburb, anything more than 
these poor huts and ruins of huts. WilHam's soldiers burned 
them, because wherever a soldier of that period appeared, the 
thatch always caught fire spontaneously. William saw the 
flames, and regarded them not, any more than he regarded 
the flames that followed in his track all the way from Sen lac. 
He gazed across the river, and remembered that twice had 
London defied all the strength of Swegen ; tiiat three times had 
London beaten off the great King Cnut when all England 
had surrendered; that in six sieges London had always been 
victorious ; he knew, because his friends in the City would 
allow no mistake on that point, that the spirit of the citizens 
was as high now as it had been then ; that they still remem- 
bered with pride the defeat of Cnut ; and that not a few were 
anxious to treat William the Norman as they had treated 
Cnut the Dane. One knows not, exactly, what things went 
on within the walls ; what exhortations, what wild talk, what 
faction fight ; how the citizens rolled, and surged, a mass of 
wild faces, about their Folk-mote by St. Paul's. But of one 
thing we may be quite certain : that William did not expect 
the citizens to be afraid of him ; and that, in fact, they were 
not afraid of him, whether he set fire to the huts of Southwark 
or not ; they were not afraid of William, whatever the histo- 
rians say. As for the Bridge, the old Roman Bridge, by this 
time there could hardly have been a single pile remaining of 
the original structure ; yet it was constantly repaired. 

We may restore to Norman London, therefore, not only 
the grey wall rising out of the level ground, without any 
ditch or moat outside, but also the Bridge of wooden piles 
with the transverse girders and beams for additional security, 
so that the old Bridge contained a whole forest of timbers 
like those which support the roof of an ancient hall. 
It was continually receiving damage. In the year 1091, a 
mighty whirlwind blew down a good part of London, houses 
and churches and all. It has been assumed that the Bridge 



EARLY HISTORY 



45 



was also destroyed ; but the ' Chronicle ' Is silent on the subject. 
In 1092 there was a great fire in London ; it is again assumed 
that the Bridge was destroyed, but again the ' Chronicle ' is 
silent. In 1097, however, it is plainly stated that the Bridge 
had been almost washed away, and that it was repaired. 

In 1 136 the most destructive fire ever experienced by 
London, save that of 1666, spread through the whole City, 
from London Bridge, which it greatly damaged, all the way 
to St. Cement Danes on the west, and Aldgate on the east. 
One wonders what ancient monuments — walls of Roman 
churches, villas, and baths, still surviving halls and chambers 
of the Forum — were destroyed in this fire ; Saxon houses of 




the better sort, with their great halls and courtyards ; small 
Saxon churches of wood or stone, with low towers and little 
windows. Possibly there was no great loss : it was already 
seven hundred years since Augusta was deserted. Roman 
remains must have been scanty ; the City was chiefly built of 
wood, with thatched roofs ; the splendour of the latter cen- 
turies had not yet commenced. The Bridge, however, was 
either wholly or in part destroyed. It was repaired, because, 
fifty years later, FitzStephen, in his description of the City, 
speaks of the citizens watching the water sports from the 
Bridge. Indeed, the Bridge was now absolutely necessary to 
the City. A hundred years of order in the City — with the seas 
cleared of pirates, the Danes kept down, and merchants filling 



46 SOUTH LONDON 

the river with ships, and the quays with merchandise — crowded 
the Bridge all day long with trains of packhorses, and the less 
frequent rude carts with broad grunting wheels which would 
have quite taken the place of the horse but for the bad roads. 
Southwark, during this period of rest, had become once more 
a town, or at least a village. Still, along the Embankment 
stood the thatched huts of the fisherfolk ; but they were 
pushed farther east and west every year, until Lambeth and 
Rotherhithe were their quarters when the fish deserted the 
river and their occupation was gone. The Roman inns were 
gone, but new ones were springing up in their places. Bishops 
and abbots were looking on Southwark as a place of fine air, 
open to every breeze and free from the noise and crowd of 
London ; ecclesiastical foundations were already springing 
into existence. In a word, the settlements of the south, after 
four hundred years of ruin and desertion, were once more 
beginning a new existence. The day when William rode up 
to the south end of the Bridge, and looked across upon a 
City that had not yet made up its mind about his reception, 
marked a new birth for the long-suffering suburb of the 
Embankment and the Causeway. A hundred years later 
still — in 1 1 76 — they began to build their Bridge of Stone. 



47 



CHAPTER III 

A FORGOTTEN MONASTERY 

The earliest maps of South London are those of the sixteenth 
century. But it is perfectly easy from them and from the 
historical facts to draw a map of all that country lying be- 
tween Deptford and Battersea which we have agreed to call 
South London. Thus, to put the map into words, there were 
buildings all along both sides of the Causeway as far as St. 
George's Church ; in the middle of the Causeway stood St. 
Margaret's Church, facing St. Margaret's Hill ; on the right- 
hand side, just under the Bridge, was St. Olave's Church. 
The Bridge was thus protected on the north by St. Magnus, 
on the south by St. Olave — two Danish saints — and in 
the middle by the patron saint of its chapel, St. Thomas 
a Becket. There were houses along the Embankment on 
either side, but more on the west of the Causeway than on 
the east. A few houses were built already on the low-lying 
ground near the Causeway ; for instance, on the south and 
south-west of St. Mary Overies. On the east of St. Olave's 
a single straight lane with no houses ran across country to 
Bermondsey Abbey ; on the west of the Causeway another 
lane led to Kennington Palace, from which another lane led 
to the Causeway from Lambeth and Westminster to the 
Dover Road. That was the whole extent of Southwark. 

The place was essentially a suburb. There were no 
trades or industries in it, except that of fishing ; the fisher- 
men had their cottages dotted about all along the Embank- 
ment ; a few watermen lived here, but that was perhaps later ; 



48 SOUTH LONDON 

other working men there were none, save the cooks and varlets 
of the great houses, and the ' service ' of the inns. Because 
the air was fresh and pure, blown up daily with the tides ; and 
because the place was easy of access, by river, to Westminster 
and the Court, many great men, ecclesiastics and nobles, had 
their town houses here : the Bishop of Winchester, the Bishop 
of Rochester, the Prior of Lewes, the Abbot of Hyde, the 
Abbot of Battle, the Earls of Surrey, Sir John Fastolfe, also 
the Brandons. Also, because it was easy of access by bridge 
and river to the City, the merchants brought their goods and 
warehoused them here in the inns at which they stayed, while 
they went across the river and transacted their business. It 
was a suburb which, in modern times, would be described as 
needing no poor rate. Later on there grew up, as we shall 
see, a class of the unclassed — a population of rogues and 
vagabonds, thieves, and sanctuary birds. 

The government of the place as a whole was difficult, 
or rather impossible.' There were several * Liberties ; ' the 
Liberty of Bermondsey ; that of the Bishop of Winchester ; 
that of the King ; that of the Mayor. The last contained the 
part of the Borough lying between St. Saviour's Dock on the 
west and Hay's Dock on the east, with a southern limit just 
including St. Margaret's Church. This very small district 
was called the Gildable Manor : it was conceded by the King 
to the City of London in the thirteenth century in order to 
prevent the place from becoming the home and refuge of 
criminals from the City. As the other liberties remained out- 
side the jurisdiction of the City, the alleviation gained was 
not very great : criminals still dropped across the river, find- 
ing shelter on the Lambeth Marsh or the marsh between 
Bermondsey and Rotherhithe. It was from this unavoidable 
hospitality to persons escaping from justice that Southwark 
received a character which has stuck to it till the present day. 
In the centuries which include the twelfth to the fifteenth, 
however, South London, so far as it was populated at all, was 



A FORGOTTEN MONASTERY 49 

the residence of great lords and the place of sojourn for mer- 
chants from the country. As yet the reputation of South- 
wark was spotless and its dignity enviable. London itself 
had no such collection of palaces gathered together so closely. 
As for the land, that lay low, but was protected by the 
Embankment from the river. Many rivulets flowed slowly 
across the misty meadows ; many ponds lay about the flats ; 
there was an abundant growth of trees everywhere, so that 
parts of the land were dark at midday by reason of the trees 
growing so close together. The rivulets were pretty little 
streams ; willows grew over them ; alders grew beside them ; 
they were coloured brown by the peaty soil ; on their banks 
grew wild flowers— the marsh mallow, the anemone, the 
hedgehog grass, the frogbit, the crowfoot, and the bitter-wort ; 
orchards flourished in the fat and fertile soil. The people had 
almost forgotten the special need of their Embankment. 
Yet when, in the year 1242, the Embankment at Lambeth was 
broken down, the river rushed in and covered six square miles 
of country, including all that part which is now called 
Battersea. 

Remember, however, that as yet there was not a single 
house upon the whole of Lambeth Marsh, nor upon the whole 
of Bermondsey Marsh. The houses began near what is now 
the south end of Blackfriars Bridge ; they faced the river, 
having gardens behind them. On the other side of the 
Bridge the houses extended farther, going on nearly opposite 
to Wapping. 

The place was well provided with prisons ; every Liberty 
had its own prison. Thus there were the Clink of the 
Winchester Liberty, that of the Bermondsey Liberty, the 
* White Lion ' of Surrey, the King's Bench, and the Mar- 
shalsea, all in the narrow limits we have laid down. And 
there were also, for the delectation of the righteous and the 
terror of evil-doers, the visible instruments for correction. In 
every parish there was the whipping post — one in St. Mary 

E 



50 SOUTH LONDON 

Overy's churchyard, put up after the time of the monks ; one 
at St Thomas's Hospital ; there was the pillory for neck and 
hands, generally with somebody on it, but the pillory was 
movable ; there was the cage — one stood at the south end of 
the Bridge — women had to stand in the cage ; there were 
stocks for feet wandering and trespassing ; there were pounds 
for stray animals. 

Markets were held in the churchyard of St. Margaret's ; 
in the precinct of Bermondsey Abbey ; and along the street 
called ' Long Southwark ' — now High Street — from the Bridge 
to St. Margaret's Hill. But we must not suppose that the 
markets of Southwark presented the same crowded appearance, 
and were carried on with the same noise and bustle, as those of 
Chepe and Newgate on the other side. 

Everything, in those days, was quiet and dignified in 
Southwark. The Princes of the Church arrived and departed, 
each with his retinue of chaplains and secretaries, gentlemen 
and livery. Kings and ambassadors rode up from Dover 
through Long Southwark and across the Bridge. The mayor 
and aldermen in new cloaks of red murrey and gold chains 
sallied forth to meet the King returning from abroad. Caval- 
cades of pilgrims for Canterbury, Compostella, Seville, Rome, 
and Jerusalem rode out of Southwark when the spring re- 
turned ; and every day there arrived and departed long lines 
of packhorses laden with the produce of the country and with 
things imported for sale in London City. Pilgrims, merchants, 
travellers, all put up at the Southwark inns. The place was 
nothing but a collection of inns ; the ecclesiastics stayed here 
for a few weeks and then went away ; the great lords came 
here when they had business at Court and then went away 
again ; the merchants came and went : by itself the place 
had, as yet, no independent life or character of its own 
at all. 

There were two Monastic Houses. Both were stately ; 
both are full of history. Let us consider the House of 



A FORGOTTEN MONASTERY 



51 



Bermondsey, because it is less generally known than the other 
of St Mary Overy or Overies. 

The Abbey of St. Saviour, Bermondsey, was the West- 
minster of South London. Like Westminster, Bermondsey 
stood upon a low islet in the midst of a marsh ; at the 
distance of half a mile on the north ran the river ; half a mile 
on the west was the Causeway ; half a mile on the south was 
the Dover road. It is significant of the seclusion in which 
the House lay that the 
only road which con- 
nected it with the world 




was that lane cdlled Bermondsey or Barnsie or Barnabie 
Lane, which ran from the Abbey to St. Olave's and so to 
London Bridge. It was not, like Westminster, a place 
of traffic and resort. It lay alone and secluded, sepaiated 
from the noise and racket of life. When the marsh had been 
gradually drained and the Embankment continued through 
Rotherhithe to Deptford and beyond the Greenwich levels, 



52 



SOUTH LONDON 



the Abbey lands round the islet became extremely fertile and 
wooded and covered with sheep and cattle. 

The House was founded in the year 1 182 by one Ailwin 
Childe, a merchant of the City, an Alderman also and one of 
the ruling families of London. He was the son of an elder 
Ailwin, who was a member of that * Knighten Guild ' which, 
with all its members and all its property — the land which 
now forms the Ward of Portsoken — went over to the Priory 
of the Holy Trinity. Religion of a practical and real kind 







was therefore hereditary in the family. The elder Ailwin 
became a monk, the younger founded a monastery ; his son, 
the third of the family of whom we know anything, became 
the first Mayor of London, and remained Mayor for twenty- 
four years— the rest of his life. 

The whole of history from the ninth to the fifteenth 
century is full of a pathetic longing after a religious Order, 
if that could be found, of true and proved sanctity. One 
Order after the other arises ; one after the other challenges 



A FORGOTTEN MONASTERY 53 

respect for reputed holiness of a new and hitherto unknown 
kind : in fact, it commands the respect of the people who 
always admire voluntary privation of what they value so 




"„.,gva«>5;^-__A. 



"S^ 



GATEWAY OF BERMONDSEY ABBEY 



much — food and drink ; it receives endowments, gifts, 
foundations of all kinds ; it then departs from the ancient 
rule, and quickly loses its hold upon the people. This is the 



54 SOUTH LONDON 

simple history of Benedictine, Franciscan, Cistercian, and all 
the rest. However, at the close of the eleventh century the 
Cluniac was in the highest repute for a rigid Rule, strictly 
kept : and for an austerity strictly enforced. It was a 
Cluniac House which Ailwin Childe set up in Bermondsey, 
and which Earl de Warren, who also founded the Cluniac 
House of Lewes, enriched. 

This Priory, with thirty-seven other Houses, was an Alien 
owing obedience to the Abbot of Cluny. A large part of its 
revenues, therefore, was sent out of the country, and it re- 
ceived its Priors from abroad. In the reign of Henry the 
Fifth the growing dissatisfaction on account of the Alien 
Priories came to a head, and they were all suppressed, or at 
least cut off from obedience to the Mother Convent. The 
Priory of Bermondsey was therefore raised to the dignity of 
an Abbey, with an English Abbot, and so continued until 
the Dissolution. 

The Abbey was one of the many places of pilgrimage 
dotted about round London — places accessible in a single 
day's journey. Thus there were the three shrines of Wil- 
lesden, Muswell Hill, and Gospel Oak, each possessing an 
image of the Virgin to which miraculous powers were 
attributed. At Blackheath there was another holy shrine ; at 
Bermondsey there was a Holy Rood which was daily visited 
in the summer by pious pilgrims from London. The Rood 
had been fished up from the Thames, and no one knew its 
history ; but the merit of a pilgrimage to the Abbey and of 
prayers said before the shrine was considered very precious. 
It was, moreover, an easy pilgrimage. A boat taken below 
the Bridge would take the pilgrim over to the opposite shore 
in a few minutes, where a cross standing before a lane lead- 
ing out of ' Short Southwark ' showed him the way. It was 
but half a mile to the Abbey of St. Saviour and the Holy 
Rood. 

*Go/ writes John Paston in 1465 to his mother, 'visit the 



A FORGOTTEN MONASTERY 55 

Rood of North door and St. Saviour in Bermondsey among 
while ye abide in London ; and let my sister Margery go 
with you to pray to them that she may have a good husband 
or she come home again.' 

One can hardly expect that the Abbot of Cluny should 
resign this valuable possession without a remonstrance. He 
made, in fact, the strongest possible remonstrance. In 1457 
he sent over three monks with orders to lay the case before 
the King, and to invite his attention especially to the papers 
showing the clear and indisputable right of the Mother Con- 
vent to the House of Bermondsey. These monks, in fact, did 
present their case to the King, with the documents. But no 
one heeded them ; they could hardly get a hearing ; no one 
replied to their arguments. This neglect was perhaps the 
cause why one of them died while in this country. The 
other two went home again, having accomplished nothing. 
One of them on the eve of their departure wrote a piteous 
letter to the Abbot of St. Albans :— 

For the rest, be .it known to you, my Lord, that after having 
spent four months and a half on our journey, and following our 
Right with the most serene Lord the King and his Privy Council, we 
have obtained nothing : nay, we are sent back very disconsolate, 
deprived of our Manors, our Pensions alienated, and, what is still 
worse, we are denied the obedience of all our Monasteries which 
are 38 in number : nor did our Legal Deeds, nor the Testimonies 
of your Chronicles avail us anything, and at length, after all our 
pleading and expenses, we return home moneyless, for in truth, 
after paying for what we have eaten and drunk, we have but five 
crowns left, to go back about 260 leagues. But what then ? We 
will sell what we have : we will go on : and God will provide. 
Nothing else occurs to write to your Paternity : but that as we 
entered England with joy, so we depart thence with sorrow : having 
buried one of our Companions - viz. the Archdeacon, the youngest 
of our company. May he rest in Peace ! Amen. 

There is not at the present moment a single stone of 
this stately House visible, though there were many remains 



56 SOUTH LONDON 

above ground one hundred years ago. It is a pity, because 
there is the association of two Queens, not to speak of many 
great Lords of state Functions, and of Padiaments, connected 
with this House secluded in the Marsh. 

The first of the two Queens is Katharine of Valois, 
widow of Henry the Fifth. The story is the most romantic, 
perhaps, of all the stories connected with our line of sove- 
reigns and Queens and Royal Princes. It is not a new story, 
and yet it is not so well known that any apology is needed 
for telling it once more. 

Henry died August 31, 1422. His widow, Katharine, 
began to live in the seclusion fitted for her sorrow and her 
widowhood. Among her household, the office of Clerk to the 
Wardrobe was filled by a young and handsome Welshman 
named Owen Tudor, or Theodore. He was the son of a 
plain Welsh gentleman of slender means, if any, who was in 
the service of the Bishop of Chester. He distinguished 
himself at Agincourt in the following of some nobleman 
unknown. It has been said, with singular ignorance of the 
time, that he was a private soldier — that is, a man with a pike 
or a bow, dressed in a leather jerkin which the men threw 
off when the battle began. The opportunities for a common 
soldier to distinguish himself in such an action were few, 
nor do we ever hear of a king raising a man from the 
ranks, as Henry raised Owen Tudor, to the post of Esquire 
to the Body. It is possible, but most improbable, that Owen 
Tudor was regarded as a common soldier : since his father 
was a gentleman in the service of the Bishop of Chester, he 
himself would go to war as a gentleman in the service and 
wearing the livery of some noble lord. 

In this way, however, his promotion began. When the 
King married, Owen Tudor was attached to the household 
of the Queen. After the death of Henry he accompanied 
the Queen and remained in her service as Clerk to the 
Wardrobe. In this office he had to buy whatever was 



A FORGOTTEN MONASTERY 57 

wanted by the Queen — her silk, her velvet, her cloth of gold. 
He was therefore brought into much closer and more direct 
relation with the Queen than other officers of the household. 
He pleased her by his appearance, his accomplishments, 
and his manners. Tradition says that he danced very well. 
There is no reason to inquire by what attractions or accom- 
plishments he pleased. The fact remains that he did please 
the Queen, and that so much that she consented to a 
secret marriage with him. It was a dangerous step for this 
Welsh adventurer to take : it was a step which would cover 
the Queen with dishonour should it become known. That 
the widow of the great and glorious Henry, chief captain of 
the age, should be able to forget her husband at all ; should 
be capable of union with any lower man ; should ally her 
royal line with that of a man who could only call himself 
gentleman after the fashion of Wales : would certainly be 
considered to bring dishonour on the King, the royal family, 
and the country at large. 

The marriage was not found out for some years. The 
Queen must have been most faithfully and loyally served, 
because children cannot be born without observation. Owen 
Tudor m^ust have conducted matters with a discretion beyond 
all praise. No doubt the ordinary members of the household 
knew nothing and suspected nothing, because several years 
passed before any suspicion was awakened. Three sons and 
one daughter, in all, were born. The eldest, Edmund of 
Hadham, was so called because he was born there ; the 
second, Jasper, was of Hatfield ; the third, Owen, of West- 
minster ; the youngest, Margaret, died in infancy. 

Suspicions were aroused about the time of the birth of 
Owen, which took place apparently before it was expected 
and without all the precautions necessary, in the King's 
House at Westminster. The infant was taken as soon as 
born to the monastery of St. Peter's, secretly. Jt is not 
likely that the Abbot received the child without full know- 



58 SOUTH LONDON 

ledge of his parents. He did take the chilcl, however ; and 
here the little Owen remained, growing up in a monastery, 
and taking vows in due time. Here he lived and here he 
died, a Benedictine of Westminster. 

It would seem as if Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, 
heard some whisper or rumour concerning this birth, or was 
told something about the true nature of the Queen's illness, 
for he issued a very singular proclamation, warning the 
world, generally, against marrying Queen dowagers, as if 
these ladies grew on every hedge. When, however, a year 
or so afterwards, the fourth child, Margaret, was born, 
Humphrey learned the whole truth : the degradation, as he 
thought it, of the Queen, who had stooped to such an alli- 
ance, and the humble rank and the audacity of the Welsh- 
man. He took steps promptly. He sent Katharine with 
some of her ladies to Bermondsey Abbey, there to remain 
in honourable confinement : he arrested Owen Tudor, a 
priest — probably the priest who had performed the marriage — 
and his servant, and sent all three to Newgate. 

All three succeeded in breaking prison, and escaped. At 
this point the story gets mixed. The King himself, we are 
told, then a lad of fifteen, sent to Owen commanding his 
attendance before the Council. Why did they not arrest him 
again ? Owen, however, refused to trust himself to the 
Council — was not Humphrey, Duke of Gloucester, one of 
them? He asked for a safe-conduct. They promised him 
one by a verbal message. Where was he, then, that all these 
messages should be sent backwards and forwards ? I think 
he must have been in Sanctuary. He refused a verbal 
message, and demanded a written safe-conduct. This was 
granted him, and he returned to London. But he mistrusted 
even the written promise ; he would not face the Council : he 
took refuge in the Sanctuary of Westminster, where they 
were afraid to seize him. And here for a while he remained. 
It is said that they tried to draw him out by sending old 



A FORGOTTEN MONASTERY 59 

friends who invited him to the taverns outside the Abbey 
Precinct. But Owen would not be so drawn. He knew 
that Duke Humphrey would make an end of him if he could. 
He therefore remained where he was. I think that he must 
have had some secret understanding with the King ; for one 
day, learning that Henry himself was with the Council, he 
suddenly presented himself and pleaded his own cause. The 
mild young king, tender on account of his mother, would 
not allow the case to be pursued, but bade him go free. 

He departed ; he made all haste to get out of an un- 
wholesome air : he made for Wales. Here the hostility 
of Duke Humphrey pursued him still : he was once more 
arrested, taken to Wallingford, and placed in the Castle there 
a prisoner. From Wallingford he was transferred again to 
Newgate, he and his priest and his servant. Once more they 
all three broke prison, ' foully ' wounding a warder in the 
achievement of liberty, and got back to Wales, choosing for 
their residence the mountainous parts into which the English 
garrisons never penetrated. 

When the King came of age Owen Tudor was allowed 
to return, and was presented with a pension of £40 a year. 
It is remarkable, however, that he received no promotion, 
or rank ; that he was never knighted ; and that the title of 
Esquire was the only one by which he was known. It cer- 
tainly seems as if the claim of Owen Tudor to be called a, 
gentleman was not recognised by the King or the heralds. 
Perhaps Welsh gentility was as little understood by these 
Normans as Irish royalty — yet, so far as length of pedigree 
goes, both Welsh and Irish were very superior to Normans. 

The two sons, Edmund and Jasper, were placed under 
the charge of Katharine de la Pole, Abbess of Barking, and 
sister of the Earl of Suffolk. When the King came of age 
he remembered his half-brothers : Edmund was made Earl 
of Richmond, Jasper Earl of Pembroke ; both ranked before 
all other English Earls. Edmund was afterwards married to 



6o SOUTH LONDON 

Margaret Beaufort, who as Countess of Richmond was the 
foundress of Christ's and St. John's Colleges, Cambridge. 
Her son, as everybody knows, was Henry VH. 

As for Owen Tudor, that gallant adventurer, who began 
so well on the field of battle, ended as well, fighting, as he 
should, for his step-son and King, under the badge of the Red 
Rose. When the Civil Wars began he joined the King's 
forces, though he was then nearer seventy than sixty. He 
fought at Wakefield ; he pursued the Yorkists to Mortimer's 
Cross, where another fight took place. The Lancastrians 
were defeated. Owen was taken prisoner, and was cruelly 
beheaded on the field. It was right and just that he should 
so fight and should so die. He survived his Queen twenty- 
four years. 

The unfortunate Katharine, whose mesalliance gave us 
the strongest sovereigns we have ever had over us, did not 
long survive the disgrace of discovery. As to public know- 
ledge of the fact, one cannot learn how widely it was ex- 
tended. Probably it grew by degrees : chroniclers speak of 
it without reserve, and when the sons grew up and were 
acknowledged by the King there was no pretence at conceal- 
ment. To be the son of a French Princess and a Welsh 
gentleman was not, after all, a matter for shame or conceal- 
ment. Katharine carried down to the Abbey a disorder 
which she calls of long standing and grievous. It killed her 
in less than a year after her imprisonment among the 
orchards and meadows of the Precinct. It is said that her 
remorse during her last days was very deep ; not for her 
second marriage, but for having allowed her accouchement 
of the King to take place at Windsor, a place against 
which she was warned by the astrologer. ' Henry of Windsor, 
shall lose all that Henry of Monmouth shall win.' Alas! 
had Henry of Windsor been Henry of Monmouth himself, 
he would have lost all there was to lose. Could there be a 
worse prospect, had Katharine understood the dangers, of 



A FORGOTTEN MONASTERY 6i 

hereditary disease ? On the one side the grandson of a leper 
and the son of a consumptive ; on the other side, the grand- 
son of a madman and a Messahna. 

Katharine dictated her will a few days before her death. 




o-z-i^ 



ST. OLAVE, SOUTHWARK 



She asks for masses for her soul : for rewards for her servants : 
for her debts to be paid. And she says not one word about 
her children by Owen Tudor. She confesses by this s.h^nce 
that she is ashamed. She confesses by this silence that, bemg 



62 SOUTH LONDON 

a Queen, and of a Royal House, she ought not in her widow- 
hood to have been mated with any less than a King. 

* I trustfully,' she says in the preamble, addressing her son 
the King, * and am right sure, that among all creatures earthly 
ye best may and will best tender and favour my will, in 
ordaining for my soul and body, in seeing that my debts be 
paid and my servants guerdoned, and in tender and favourable 
fulfilment of mine intent' The words are full of queenly 
dignity ; but — where is the mention of her children ? 
Perhaps, however, she knew that the King would provide for 
them. 

Another Queen died here : the Queen * to whom all griefs 
were known ' — Elizabeth Woodville. It is not easy to feel 
much sympathy with this unfortunate woman, yet there are 
few scenes of history more full of pathos and of mournfulness 
than that in which her boy was torn from her arms ; and she 
knew — all knew— even the Archbishops, when they gave their 
consent, knew — that the boy was to be done to death. When 
one talks of Queens and their misfortunes, it may be 
remembered that few Queens have suffered more than 
Elizabeth Woodville. In misfortune she sits apart from other 
Queens, her only companions being Mary Queen of Scots and 
Marie Antoinette. Her record is full of woe. But in that 
long war it seems impossible to find one single character, man 
or woman — unless it is King Henry — who is true and loyal. 
All — all— are perjured, treacherous, cruel, self-seeking. All 
are as proud as Lucifer. Murder is the friend and companion 
of the noblest lord ; perjury walks on the other side of him ; 
treachery stalks behind him : all are his henchmen. Eliza- 
beth met perjury and treachery with intrigue and plot and 
counter-plot : she was the daughter of her time. She was 
accused of being privy to the plots of Lambert Simnel and 
Perkin Warbeck : she was more Yorkist than her husband ; 
she hated the Red Rose long after the Red and the White 
were united by her daughter and Henry the Seventh. That 



A FORGOTTEN MONASTERY 



63 



she was suspected of these intrigues shows the character she 
bore. We must make allowance : she was always in a false 
position ; Edward ought not to have married her ; she was 
hated by her own party ; she was compelled in the interests 
of her children to be always on the defensive ; and in her 
conduct of defence she was the daughter of her age. These 



#%.. r. 




^g^rffpf 



':^mmS!-U''-^' 




LE LOKE 



things, however, depriye her, somewhat, of the pity which we 
ought to feel for so many misfortunes. 

She, too, had to retire to the seclusion of Bermondsey, 
where she could sit and watch the ships go up and down, 
and so feel that the world, with which she had no more con- 
cern, still continued. It has been suggested that she retired 
voluntarily to the Abbey. Such a retreat was not in the 



64 SOUTH LONDON 

character of Elizabeth Woodville, so long as there was a 
daughter or a kinsman left to fight for. Like Katharine of 
Valois, she made an end not without dignity. Witness the 
following clause in her will : — 

Item. Whereas I have no worldly goods with which to do the 
Queen's Grace, my dearest daughter, a pleasure, neither to reward 
any of my children, according to my heart and mind, I beseech God 
Almighty to bless her Grace with all her noble Issue, and, with as 
good a heart and mind as may be, 1 give her Grace aforesaid my 
blessing and all the aforesaid my children. 

In this chapter it has been my endeavour to restore an 
ecclesiastical foundation which has somehow dropped out of 
history and become no more than a name. If this were a 
history of South London it would be necessary to devote an 
equal space to other houses ; to the churches and to the 
two ancient hospitals ' Le Loke ' and St. Thomas's. It is 
impossible, even in these narrow limits, to speak of the 
religious foundations of South London without mention of the 
other great House, more ancient than that of Bermondsey. 
Few Americans who visit London leave it without paying a 
pilgrimage to the venerable and beautiful church which 
glorifies Southwark. There were great marriages and great 
functions held in the Church of St. Mary Overy : Gower, that 
excellent poet whom the professors of literature praise and 
nobody reads, died and lies buried in this church ; it was the 
church of the playerfolk : here lie buried Edmund Shakespeare, 
John Fletcher, Philip Massinger, and Philip Henslow. Here 
lie buried, in that * sure and certain hope ' which the Church 
allows even to them, the rufflers, * roreres ' and sinners of 
Bank Side and Maiden Lane ; the brawlers and the topers 
and the strikers of the Bear Garden and the Bull Baiting. 
Here were tried notable heretics : Hooper and Rogers, and 
many more, while Gardiner and Bonner thundered and bullied. 
From this church the martyrs went forth to meet the flames. 
The people of Southwark needed not to cross the river in 
order to learn such lessons as the martyrdoms had to teach 



A FORGOTTEN MONASTERY ^S 

them. The stake was set up in St. George's Fields, where 
they could read, mark, learn, and inwardly digest the un- 
designed teaching of Bonner and his friends. 

It is the custom of historians to point to the martyrdom 
of Cranmer and the Bishops as the chief cause of the over- 
whelming Protestant reaction. S(3 great was the horror, they 
say, of the people at the death of the Archbishop, that the 
whole nation was roused— and so on. For myself I like to 
think that, as the people would feel now, so, 7maatis mutandis, 
they felt then. Was there any such mighty horror felt in 
London when Cranmer died in Oxford.? Not so much 
horror, I believe, as when from their own ranks, from their 
own houses, from their own families, men and women 
and boys were taken out and led to execution. Violent 
deaths— by beheading, by hanging, by the flames -were 
witnessed every day. How many were hanged by 
Henry VIII.? The deaths of nobles did not touch the 
people ; they looked on unmoved while the most innocent and 
most holy men in the country— the blameless Carthusians- 
suffered death as traitors ; they looked on at the death of Sir 
Thomas More ; when witches were burned they looked on. 
It was when they saw their own brothers, sisters, cousins, 
dragged out and put to death without a cause, that they 
began to doubt and to question. Nay, I think it was not the 
manner of death that affected them, because burning was a 
thing so common : it was the sentence itself passed on honest 
and godly folk, and the behaviour of the people at their 
death. Tender women chained to the stake suffered without 
a groan, only praying loudly till death came ; people remem- 
bered, they recalled with tears afterwards, how the martyr 
and his wife and his children knelt on the ground for one last 
prayer before the stake ; they remembered how the sufferer 
stepped into his place with a smiling face and welcomed the 
fiery lane that led him to the place where he longed to be : 
was this, they asked, the courage inspired of God, or of the 



F 



66 SOUTH LONDON 

devil ? They remembered how another washed his hands in 
the mounting and roaring flames ; how the clouds parted at 
the prayer of another, and the smiling sun of heaven shone 
upon him ; and it was even like unto the countenance of the 
Blessed Lord. The sight and the remembrance of the 
sufferings of their own folk, not the execution at a distance of 
an Archbishop and a few Bishops, moved the people and 
remained with them, and enveloped the Church of Rome 
with a hatred from which it has not wholly recovered even in 
these latter days. 

The foundation of St. Thomas's Hospital belongs to both 
the great Houses of Southwark. 

It was the general Rule in all religious Houses that there 
should be a provision for the poor, the sick, and those who 
were orphans. St. Mary Overy had a hospital adjoining the 
priory which was an almshouse certainly, and probably an 
orphanage as well. It was under the care of the Archdeacon 
of Surrey. Attached to St. Saviour's was an almonry in- 
tended for the same purpose. But the Abbey was entirely 
secluded : it lay far from any highway ; there were no houses, 
except farm buildings for the monastery's labourers ; there 
were no poor, no sick, and no orphans. So that, when the 
great fire of 12 13 destroyed Southwark and crossed the river 
by the Bridge into London, the monks of St. Saviour's 
bethought them that to make their almonry useful it would 
be well to rebuild it half a mile to the west, on the Southwark 
Causeway. This was done, and the Hospital of St. Mary 
was united with it, and the new foundation which Bishop 
Peter de Rupibus most liberally endowed was named after 
St. Thomas. At first it was not a hospital especially for the 
sick, as St. Bartholomew's and St. Mary of Spittal. It was a 
fraternity like St. Catherine's by the Tower, for brethren and 
sisters under a master, with bedesmen and women, and a 
school, and an infirmary ; but not, as St. Bartholomew's 
was from the beginning altogether, only a hospital for the sick. 



A FORGOTTEN MONASTERY 



67 



As for the religious life of the place, it was in most 
respects like that of London. There were no houses for 
Friars, but the Friars came across the river en guHn. 








REMAINS OF THE PALACE OF THE BISHOP OF WINCHESTER, FROM THE SOUTH 

F 2 



6S SOUTH LONDON 

* mumping/ on their begging rounds ; and in the taverns were 
put up boxes for the contributions of the faithful (towards the 
end these contributions fell off sadly). There was plenty of 
life and colour in the streets : serving men in bright liveries 
of the great Houses — the Bishops of Winchester and Rochester, 
the Abbots of Lewes, Hyde, and Battle — went about their 
errands ; there were Gilds, notably that of St. George, which 
had their processions and their days : there were crosses and 
images of saints, at which the passer-by doffed his hat — in 
the wall of Lambeth Palace was an image of St. Thomas a 
Becket overlooking the river, to which every waterman and 
bargee paid reverence. 

Some of the punishments of the time were ordered by 
the Church. There was whipping, but not the terrible 
murderous flogging of the eighteenth century ; there were 
hangings, but not for everything. Mostly to the credit 
of the Church, punishment was designed not to crush 
a man, but to shame him into repentance, and to give him a 
chance of retrieving his character. A man might be set in 
the stocks, or put in pillory, and so made to feel the heinous- 
ness of his offence. This punishment was like that which is 
inflicted on a schoolboy : the thing done, the boy is taken 
back to favour. The eighteenth century branded him, im- 
prisoned him, transported him, made a brute of him, and 
then hanged him. Did a woman speak despitefully ot 
authority ? Presumptuous quean ! Set her up in the cage 
besides the stoulpes of London Bridge, that everyone should 
see her there and should ask what she had done. After an 
hour or two take her down ; bid her go home and keep 
henceforth a quiet tongue in her head. This leniency was 
only for offences moral and against the law. For freedom ot 
thought or doctrine there was Bishop Bonner's better way. 
And it was a way inhuman, inflexible, unable to forgive. 



69 



CHAPTER IV 

THE ROYAL HOUSES OF SOUTH LONDON 

All round London, like beads upon a string, were dotted 
Royal Houses, Palaces, and Hunting Places. On the north side 
were Westminster, Whitehall, St. James's, Kensington, Shene, 
Theobald's, Hatfield, Cheshunt, King's Langley, Hunsdon, 
Havering-atte-Bower, Stepney, the Tower ; on the south 
side were Kennington, Eltham, Greenwich, Kew, Hampton, 
Windsor, a tradition attaching to Streatham, and the House 
of Nonesuch, built by Henry VHI. at Cheam. Most of these 
royal houses are now clean forgotten. Eltham preserves 
some ruins left of Edward IV. 's buildings ; it still shows the 
moat and the old bridge, and the line of its former wall ; but 
tradition, which has quite forgotten its memories of the 
Edwards and the Tudors, describes it as the Palace of King 
John. The sailors — now, alas ! also gone — have deprived 
Greenwich of Edward VI. and Elizabeth. Theobald's is gone 
altogether. Nonesuch is wholly cleared away. Of Kennington, 
of which I have to speak in this place, not one stone remains 
upon another ; not a vestige is above ground ; the people on 
the spot know of no remains underground ; its very memory is 
gone and forgotten : there is not even a tradition left, although 
part of the ruins were still standing only a hundred years 
ago. 

The reason for this oblivion is not far to seek. The palace 
was deserted ; it was pulled down before 1607 — Camden says 
that even then there was not a stone remaining — there was 
not a single house within half a mile in every direction. There 
was no one, when the last stones had been carted away, left 



JO SOUTH LONDON 

to remember or to remind his children that there had been a 
palace on this spot. Another house was built here, but no 
tradition attached to it. Two hundred years passed, and then 
came the destruction of the second house ; in 1745 there was 
not even a cottage near the spot This being so, it is not 
difficult to understand why the site was forgotten. 

The moat remained, however, and apparently some of the 
substructures ; a building of stone and thatch, part of the 
offices of the palace, also stood. They called it the ' Long 
Barn,' and when the distressed Protestants were brought over 
here in 1700 as many as the place would hold were crammed 




THE LONG BARN 

into the Long Barn. Market gardens lay all over the country 
between Kennington Road and Lambeth, and on the site of 
the palace there was not a single person left who could carry 
on the tradition of the king's house that once stood here. 
Roque, the map-maker of 1745, knew nothing about it. In 
1795 the Long Barn was taken down. At the beginning of 
the century houses began to rise here and there ; streets 
began to be formed : at least three streets cross the gardens 
and the site of the palace ; but there is not one tradition of a 
place which, as we shall see, was full of history for six hundred 
years. ' Is this fame ? ' might ask the king who crowned 
himself here, the king who died here, the king who was brought 



THE ROYAL HOUSES OF SOUTH LONDON 71 

up here, the kings who kept their Christmas feast here, the 
kings who here received their brides, held Parliament, and 
went out a-hunting. 

The king who crowned himself here was Harold Harefoot, 
son of Cnut — that is to say, it was at * Lambeth,' and there 
was no other house at Lambeth. 

The king who died in this house was that young Dane 
who appears to have been an incarnation of the ideal Danish 
brutality. He dragged his brother's body out of its grave and 
flung it into the Thames ; he massacred the people of Wor- 







SKETCH MAP 



caster and ravaged the shire ; and he did these brave deeds 
and many others all in two short years. Then he went to his 
own place. His departure was both fitting and dramatic. 
For one so young it showed with what a yearning and 
madness he had been drinking. He went across the river — 
there was, I repeat, no other house in Lambeth except this, 
so that it must have been here — to attend the wedding of his 
standard-bearer, Tostig the Proud, with Goda, daughter of the 
Thane Osgod Clapa, whose name survives in his former estate 
of Clapham. A Danish wedding was always an occasion for 



72 SOUTH LONDON 

hard drinking, while the minstrels played and sang and the 
mummers tumbled. When men were well drunken the pleasing 
sport of bone throwing began : they threw the beef bones at 
each other. The fun of the game consisted in the accident of a 
man not being able to dodge the bone which struck him, and 
probably killed him. Archbishop Alphege was thus killed. 
The soldiers had no special desire to kill the old man : why 
couldn't he enter into the spirit of the game and dodge the 
bones ? As he did not, of course he was hit, and as the bone 
was a big and a heavy bone, hurled by a powerful hand, of 
course it split open his skull. One may be permitted to think 
that perhaps King Hardacnut, who is said to have fallen dov/n 
suddenly when he ' stood up to drink,' did actually intercept a 
big beef bone which knocked him down ; and as he remained 
comatose until he died, the proud Tostig, unwilling to have it 
said that even in sport his king had been killed at his wedding, 
gave out that the king fell down in a fit. This, however, is 
speculation. 

Forty years after this event, when Domesday Book was 
compiled, the place was in the possession of a London citizen, 
Theodric by name and a goldsmith by trade. It was still a 
royal manor, because the goldsmith held it of Edward the 
Confessor. It was then valued at three pounds a year. It is 
impossible to arrive at the meaning of this valuation. We 
may compare it with that of other estates, with the rental and 
price of other lands, with the cost of provisions, and with the 
wages and pay of servants and officers ; and when we have 
done all, we are still very far from understanding the value of 
money then or at any subsequent time. There are, you see, 
so many points which the writers on the value of money do 
not take into consideration. * There is the price of bread ; 
but then there were so many kinds of bread — wheaten bread, 
barley bread, oat bread, rye bread ; and how much bread did 
a family of the working class consume ? Flesh, fish, fowl, 
but how much of either did the working classes enjoy ? Rent ? 



THE ROYAL HOUSES OF SOUTH LONDON 73 

But on the farms the " villains " paid no rent. There is, in a 
word, not only the market prices that have to be considered, 
but the standard of comfort — always a little higher than the 
practice — and the daily relations of the demand to the supply. 
So that when we read that this manor of Kennington was 
worth three pounds a year we are not advanced in the least. 
As most of the land was still marshy and useless, we may 
understand that the value was low. 

We next hear of Kennington in 1189, when King 
• Richard granted it on lease, or for life, to Sir Robert Percy 
with the title of Lord of the Manor. Henry HI. came here 
on several occasions ; here he held his Lambeth Parliament. 
He kept his Christmas here in 1231. Great was the feasting 
and boundless the hospitality of this Christmas, at which this 
king lavished the treasures of the State. 

The site of the palace is indicated in the accompanying 
map. If you walk along the Kennington Road from Bridge 
Street Westminster, you presently come to a place where 
four roads meet. Upper Kennington Lane on the left, and 
Lower Kennington Lane on the right ; the road goes on to 
the Horns Tavern and Kennington Park. On the right-hand 
side stood the palace. In the year 1636 a plan of the house 
and grounds was executed ; but by that time the mediaeval 
character of the place was quite forgotten. It was a square 
house, probably Elizabethan ; the home of King Henry HI. 
at some time or other had been completely taken away. The 
site of the moat, however, was left, and there was still stand- 
ing the ' Long Barn.' The only way to find out what the 
palace really was in the thirteenth or fourteenth century is to 
compare it with another palace built under much the same 
conditions, and intended to serve the same purpose. For- 
tunately there still stand, some miles to the east of Kenning- 
ton, at Eltham, important remains of such a contemporary 
palace, with a description of the place as it was before it was 
allowed to fall into ruins. 



74 SOUTH LONDON 

We are not at this moment concerned with the history of 
Eltham. Sufficient to note that it was a great and stately- 
place for five hundred years and more ; that it passed through 
the hands of Bishop Odo ; of the Mandevilles ; of the De 
Vescis ; of Bishop Anthony Bee ; and of Geoffrey le Scrope 
of Masham. As a royal residence its history begins with 
Henry HI., who kept his Christmas here in 1270, and ends 
with Elizabeth, who came over here occasionally from 
Greenwich. Here Isabella, wife of Edward II., gave birth 
to a son, John of Eltham. The greatest builder at Eltham 
was Edward IV. 

The house in 1649, fifty years after Elizabeth had visited 
it, is said to have contained a chapel, a banqueting-hall, rooms 
on the ground floor and first floor called the King's side and 
the Queen's side. There were buildings and rooms of all 
kinds round the courtyard. The number of chambers in all 
was very great, and it is said, further, that the large court- 
yard covered a whole acre in extent. Such an area 
would give about two hundred and ten feet to each side of a 
square. This would be large for a college at Oxford or 
Cambridge. It would cover about the same area as that of 
New Palace Yard. There were, however, other courts ; four 
courts in all are spoken of The lesser courts were used for 
the * service,' the kitchens, butteries, pantries, stables, rooms 
for the servants, the barracks for the men-at-arms who 
accompanied the king, the grooms, armourers, makers and 
menders, bakers and brewers, cooks and scullions, and the 
women servants, and the wives and the children. A strong 
stone wall, battlemented, with loopholed turrets, surrounded 
the palace ; a broad and deep moat defended the wall ; the 
bridge which crossed the moat had a drawbridge ; the gate 
had its portcullis. The palace, in a word, was a fortress, for 
there was never a king in England who would have dared to 
keep his court, or to sleep, in an unfortified manor house, or 
outside a fortress — certainly not Henry III. or Edward IV. 






THE ROYAL HOUSES OF SOUTH LONDON 75 

^unless, of course, it was on the tented field in the midst of 
his army. 

The existing remains of the palace correspond to this 
description. There is the moat, deep and broad ; there is the 
bridge, the drawbridge gone. Within, the most important 
ruin is that of Edward IV.'s banqueting hall. This is a most 
noble chamber, with a roof of oak as perfect as when it was 
built ; the two magni- 
ficent bays remain, with 
the double row of win- 
dows. It would be 
difficult to find a finer 
banqueting hall in the 
whole country than 
that of Eltham. In the 
grounds, the traces of 
the wall and those of 
other buildings ought 
to make it possible, 
with a very little exca- 
vation, to trace a plan i^ *^?^ 
of the whole house. 

As was Eltham, so 
was Kennington. Both 
places were built for 
the same purpose about 
the same time. Both 
were castles erected on a plain without the aid of hillock, 
mound or running stream— unless the moat at Kennington was 
fed by one of the many streams of South London. The plan 
of 1636 shows approximately the line of the wall ; the stream 
or the ditch marks the course of the moat ; the ' Long Barn ' 
on the east side of the palace belonged to the ' service '—it 
was kitchens, stables, armoury, brewery, or granary. The 
house itself had its principal entrance on the north. This is 







'-^'p^p^' 



y6 SOUTH LONDON 

certain, because all the supplies were brought by what is 
now Kennington Road either from Westminster Ferry or 
from Southwark. A gate on this side simplified the 
transference which took place when the court moved from 
one place to another ; when everything — bedding, blankets, 
utensils of all kinds, plate, batterie de cuisine^ the workmen 
with their tools, the wardrobe of king and queen — was packed 
up and carried from Westminster over the ferry to Kenning- 
ton, or from Kennington to Woolwich. Provisions and goods 
sent up from the City were also landed at Stangate, Lambeth, 
so as to get as short a land journey as possible. For these 
reasons I place the principal gate at the north. 

I have seen it stated — I know not with what truth — that 
the people of the streets now on the site have found sub- 
structures beneath their houses. If so, one would expect, 
what one cannot find, some tradition to account for the 
existence of these stone vaults. 

Such was the vanished Palace of Kennington : a fortress 
of the Lambeth Marsh, a place for keeping Christmas, a royal 
residence ; now completely vanished. 

Two other royal houses there were in South London, 
neither of which can be compared with Kennington. Green- 
wich, for instance, which appears in history from the time of 
King Alfred. Edward I., Henry IV., Henry V., Edward IV., 
Henry VII., Henry VIII., Edward VI., and Elizabeth— all 
had more or less to do with Greenwich. When Henry VIII. 
completed his buildings here he deserted Eltham ; he left, 
that is, the mediaeval fortress for the modern house. His 
Greenwich was not fortified. The accompanying view of it 
shows that it possessed none of the characteristics of the 
ancient residence, half castle, half manor house. Greenwich, 
however, before Henry rebuilt it, was a fortified castle. Had 
we a plan of Greenwich of the fourteenth century it would 
most certainly resemble those of Eltham and of Kennington, 
with certain small differences, just as one Benedictine 



THE ROYAL HOUSES OF SOUTH LONDON ^7 



monastery resembles in its general disposition another Bene- 
dictine monastery, and one Norman castle in general terms, 
and allowing for the site, resembles another. 

The other house of which I have spoken is that of 
Nonesuch, This house was not a reconstruction and an 
adaptation with much of the ancient work : it was newly 
built and furnished entirely by Henry VHI. There was no 
suspicion of battlements, no pretence at a fortification ; the 
house stood open and unprotected save by the order main- 



• ■I'h. 







tained by the strong 
king. It was not beau- 
tiful according to our 
ideas ; nor was it what 
we now call a Tudor 
house ; it bears upon it every mark of the builder's interference 
with the architect. The outside walls of Nonesuch were 
decorated by certain bas-reliefs representing subjects from 
the heathen mythology. The house was pulled down by 
the Duchess of Cleveland, to whom Charles H. gave it. 
Nonesuch, however, has nothing to do with Kennington, and 
must not detain us. 

Let us next consider what it means when the king is said 
to have kept his Christmas at a place. 



78 SOUTH LONDON 

During the festival — for twenty days — he kept open 
house, nominally. That is to say, all comers received food 
and drink : his guests, one supposes, were bidden. Every 
day during the festival the king sat at the feast wearing his 
crown and his robes of royal state. Richard II., the most 
prodigal of all princes that ever lived, entertained every day 
no fewer than ten thousand persons at his palace. What the 
number was at Christmas no one knows. In addition to the 
ordinary following of the court — a huge army of chaplains, 
canons, scribes, secretaries, gentlemen archers, and servants — 
there were the bishops and abbots, the peers and barons, who 
came to the Christmas feast, each attended by his own fol- 
lowing of knights and esquires and men in livery. For the 
entertainment of this enormous company what a huge esta- 
blishment would be needed ! The organisation was complete ; 
everything was in departments, each under the yeomen : the 
chambers, the wardrobe, the kitchens, the stables, the cellars. 
Yet what an army in each department ! Then, since at 
Christmas time we look for amusement, there was the Master 
of the Revels, and with him an extensive and variegated 
following ; among them were all those who played on the 
different instruments of music, those who sang, the buffoons, 
tumblers, and mummers, the dancing girls. It was in the 
time of Henry III. that these performances were brought over 
for the delectation of the English court — perhaps with the 
pious intention of showing what joys and attractions awaited 
the Crusaders in the Holy Land itself. 

Hall's account of the festivities of a Christmas a hundred and 
fifty years later than the time of Richard II. is as follows : — 

*The Kyng this yere kept the feast of Christmas at 
Grenewiche, wher was suche abundance of viands served to 
all comers of any honest behaviour, as hath been few times 
seen ; and against New Yeres night was made, in the Hall, 
a castle, gates, towers, and dungion, garnished with artilerie, 
and weapon after the most warlike fashion : and on the 



THE ROYAL HOUSES OF SOUTH LONDON 79 

frount of the castle was written, Le Fortresse Dangerus, and 
within the castle were six ladies clothed in russet satin laide 
all over with leves of golde, and every owde knit with laces 
of blewe silke and golde ; on ther heddes, coyfes and cappes 
all of golde. After this castle had been carried about the 
hal, and the Quene had behelde it, in came the Kyng with 
five other appareled in coates, the one half of russet satyn, 
spangled with spangles of fine golde, the other halfe riche 
cloth of gold ; on their heddes cappes of russet satin em- 
broudered with workes of fine gold bullion. These six 
assaulted the castle : the ladies seyng them so lustie and 
coragious were content to solace with them, and upon far- 
ther communication to yeld the castle, and so thei came 
down and daunced a long space. And after the ladies led 
the knightes into the castle, and then the castle sodainly 
vanished out of their sight. 

* On the daie of the Epiphanie at night, the Kyng with 
XI other were disguised after the manner of Italic, called a 
maske, a thing not seen afore in Englande ; they were 
apparelled in garments long and brode, wrought all with 
gold, with visers and cappes of gold ; and after the banket 
doen, these maskers came in with six gentlemen disguised 
in silke, bearing staffe torches, and desired the ladies to 
daunce ; some were content, and some that knew the fashion 
of it refused, because it was not a thing commonly seen. And 
after they daunced and commoned together as the fashion of 
the maske is, thei tooke their leave and departed. And 90 
did the Quene and all the ladies.' 

When the Christmas festivities ceased, the servants packed 
up the gear : the napery, plate, gold and silver cups, dishes, 
pillows, curtains, tapestry and carpets. They were all laid 
upon waggons, the broad-wheeled creaking waggons which 
were dragged slowly over the uneven and heavy lanes by 
teams of horses or by bullocks. The queen and her ladies 
were carried in chairs or carriages, or went on horseback ; the 



8o SOUTH LONDON 

king and his followers rode ; and so they went back to 
Westminster. The ferry carried over the heavy goods and 
the horses : the royal barges received the court. After them 
marched the whole rout — the two thousand archers without 
whom Richard never moved ; the armies of servants ; lastly, 
when the last procurable cup had been drained, the musicians 
and the mummers and the singers marched off sadly. A 
whole twelvemonth before another Christmas ! They marched 
in the direction of the City, and that night, as they report, 
there was strange revelry in the inns of Southwark. The 
house was left in charge of a warden, who had with him the 
principal officers of the palace, the yeomen of the wardrobe, 
of the cellars, of the kitchens, and so forth ; the organisation 
being kept up in readiness, though the king might not come 
back for years. This fact was illustrated a short time ago, 
when I was interested in watching the progress of a certain 
genealogy. About the year 1540 a certain younger son left 
his house ; it was necessary to connect him with his own 
descendants. The link was found in the fact that this younger 
son had been received by Carey, warden of Hunsdon House, 
who made him one of his yeomen ; a cheerless appointment, 
like a college in perpetual vacation, the warden and yeomen, 
representing the Master and Fellows, dining every day in the 
dismantled hall, and wandering about the empty courts and 
silent gardens. Palaces, like theatres, have their times of 
emptiness, during which it is best to keep out of them. For 
my own part, I think the true way of enjoying a palace is to 
frequent it as Froissart did : to hear all that was said and to 
put down all that was done, but not to be an actor in a drama 
which reeks of blood ; not even the splendid mounting can 
destroy that dreadful reek. How many people are murdered 
about the court of England from Richard H. to Henry VH. ? 
Richard murders his uncle, Henry IV. murders his cousin, 
Henry V. murders his uncle ; Henry VI., it is true, murders 
no one, but then he lives in a time when there is a perpetual 



THE ROYAL HOUSES OF SOUTH LONDON 8i 

series of murders. What an awful time! Froissart, who 
looked on at part of the drama, achieved deathless renown for 
his history, while in the whole of that court there was no one 
whose head was safe on his shoulders except Froissart. 
Unfortunately, he says little about this palace which we are 
considering. 

There are many names of kings and princes connected 
with this house of Kennington. Edward I. was here occa- 
sionally. During his reign it was the residence of John Earl 
of Surrey, and of his son, John Plantagenet Earl of Warren 
and Surrey. Plenty of histories could be made out of these 
and other names, had the writer time or the reader patience. 
In truth, the reader's patience is more to be considered than 
the writer's time, for the writer, at least, has the joy of hunt- 
ing up names and notes and allusions, and of piecing together 
what, after all, his reader may not find of interest enoiigh to 
carry him through. Edward HI. made the manor part of the 
Duchy of Cornwall. After the death of the Black Prince the 
princess lived here with the young Prince Richard. I do not 
find that Henry IV. was fond of a house which would certainly 
be haunted — especially the room in which he was to sleep — 
by the sorrowful shade of his murdered cousin. Nor did 
Henry V. come here during his short reign. Henry VI., 
however, made use of Kennington Palace ; so did Henry VII. ; 
and the last of the queens whose name can be connected with 
the palace was Catherine of Arragon. 

I do not know when the palace was destroyed. You have 
seen the place as it was figured in 1636, when it was only an 
ordinary square house. The plan was drawn when Charles I. 
leased it to Sir Francis Cottington. The destruction of the 
old house and the building of the new must have taken place 
during the hundred years between 1530 and 1630. When 
the new house was taken down I do not know. 

The name that we especially associate with Kennington 
Palace is that of Richard II. When the Black Prince died, 

G 



82 SOUTH LONDON 

in 1376, Richard remained at Kennington under the care of 
his mother and the tutorship of Sir Guiscard d'Angle, ' that 
accomplished knight' The young prince started with the 
finest possible chances of popularity. His father was not only 
the greatest captain of his age, but he was also, in the latter 
years of his life, on the popular side against the old King and 
his supporters ; the boy was endowed with a singular beauty 
of person, and, when he pleased, with a sweetness of manner 
most unusual even among princes, with whom affability is the 
first essential in princely manners. In addition to this he was 
destined to show on two occasions courage which almost 
amounted to insensibility — first, when he dispersed Wat 
Tyler's mob, and next, when he seized the reins of govern- 
ment. History shows how he threw away all his chances in 
reckless extravagance. 

After the death of the Black Prince it was resolved by the 
Lord Mayor to pay a visit to Prince Richard at Kennington, 
with a riding worthy of the City. The day chosen was the 
Sunday before Candlemas (February 2). One has frequent 
occasion to remark generally upon City pageants, that the 
people in these processions and their pageants were entirely 
regardless of winter cold or summer heat ; they rode forth 
upon a pageant as cheerfully in the cold of February as in the 
sunshine of August. On this occasion, one hundred and 
thirty-two citizens on horseback, with trumpets and other 
musical instruments, and a vast number oi flambeaux, as- 
sembled at Newgate in the afternoon, and marched through 
the City and over the bridge to Kennington Palace beyond 
the Borough. First rode eight-and- forty men in the habits of 
esquires — with red coats, say gowns, and vizards. Then fol- 
lowed the same number apparelled as knights in the same 
livery. Then rode one singly, a very majestic figure, who 
represented the Pope, followed by his four-and-twenty cardi- 
,nals. They were followed by ten men dressed in black, with 
black vizards, representing legates from the Pope of Hell. 



THE ROYAL HOUSES OF SOUTH LONDON S3 

This accounts for one hundred and thirty-two out of the whole 
number. The last man is not described. To them must be 
added pages and henchmen and whifflers, with men carrying 
the presents. This cavalcade, which gave the greatest joy to 
the citizens, all the way was followed by an enormous com- 
pany of 'prentices and craftsmen and children, crowding after 
it and shouting. When it arrived at Kennington Palace they 
all dismounted and entered the hall, where they found the 




SEAL OF THE BLACK PRINCE 
(From Aliens History o/ Lajttbeth) 



Princess of Wales, the young Prince, and their attendants, 
together with the Duke of Lancaster and other great lords. 
The court was first solemnly saluted by the masquers, who 
then produced dice and invited the Prince to play with them. 
Would you believe it? — every time the Prince threw, he won, 
which was in itself a remarkable circumstance. He carried 
off his winnings : a bowl of pure gold, chased and decorated ; 
a drinking cup also of gold, and a gold ring. They then 
iavited the Princess and the Duke of Lancaster and other 



G2 



84 SOUTH LONDON 

nobles present, each of whom also won and carried off a gold 
ring. This done, the music played, and they were all invited 
to supper in the hall with the Prince and the Princess his 
mother. After supper, the tables were taken away — they were 
only planks laid on trestles and covered with white cloths — 
and the floor being cleared, the masquers had the honour of 
dancing with the royal party. Finally, at a late hour, the 
Hambeaux were lighted, and the masquers rode home, well 
pleased with the reception they had met and the courtesy of 
the best behaved boy in the world. 

In the same year occurred the great riot of London, which 
arose out of Wyclyf s trial in St. Paul's and the quarrel between 
the Bishop of London and John of Gaunt. The latter, after 
the dismissal of Wyclyf, repaired to the house of John de 
Ypres, close beside the river, where he was sitting at dinner 
when one of his following ran hastily to warn him that the 
people were flocking together with intent to murder him if 
they could. The Duke therefore hastily ran down to the 
nearest stairs, took a boat across the river, and fled as quickly 
as possible to Kennington Palace, where he took shelter with 
the young Prince Richard and his guardians. The mob, 
finding that the Duke was gone, made their way to the Savoy, 
his palace, threatening to burn and destroy all : they did 
actually murder one poor priest because he resembled the 
Duke in countenance ; they were then persuaded by the 
Bishop of London to go home without doing any more mis- 
chief What would have happened one knows not, but the 
death of the old King gave an opportunity of patching up 
the peace between the Duke of Lancaster and the citizens. 
Hearing that Edward was in extremis, the Mayor and Alder- 
men waited on the Princess of Wales and Prince Richard 
informing them of the King's critical situation, and beseeching 
the Prince's favour to the City ; they also begged him to 
interfere for the better accommodation of the Duke's differences 
with them. It is pleasing to find that John of Gaunt freely 



86 SOUTH LONDON 

forgave the City and became reconciled to the citizens ; a 
reconciliation which paved the way to the subsequent popu- 
larity of his son Henry. 

It might be argued that the various impressions as regards 
London produced on the mind of this prince explain his con- 
duct towards the citizens when he grew older. The first 
experiment he had of the citizens was when they rode over in a 
goodly company clad in red cloaks with gold chains and finely 
appointed horses to visit him at Kennington : he remembered 
that their appearance betokened great wealth ; that they 
tossed about gold cups as if they were of wood. This is a 
kind of impression which does not easily die away. 

His second impression of the City was when his uncle, 
John of Gaunt, came flying from the City, having barely 
escaped with his life, the people having gone on to wreck, if 
they could, his palace of the Savoy. A turbulent and danger- 
ous people, then, as well as rich ; a people to be kept down. 

He next saw the City when he rode through it on his way 
to be crowned at Westminster. All the way there was nothing 
but rich tapestry, carpets, scarlet cloth, masquers clad in velvet, 
pageants with cloth of gold, and the streets filled with men 
and women dressed in rich furs and silks, such as only great 
barons could afford. This third impression confirmed the 
first. 

His next impression was that of the City lying prostrate 
at the mercy of a large mob, unable to move or to help itself. 
He went into the City almost alone ; he, by one single act of 
splendid courage, put an end to the insurrection. A City 
cowardly, therefore, and unable to act together. It was his 
City, moreover— the Camera Regis. Should not a prince do 
what he pleases with his own ? 

When we read of his subsequent treatment of the City : 
how he believed its treasures to be inexhaustible ; how he be- 
lieved that it had no power to resist ; how he made the way 
easy for his cousin to supplant him, let us bear in mind the 



THE ROYAL HOUSES OF SOUTH LONDON ^7 

lessons which the Londoners themselves provided for him in 
his youth. 

This King seizes on the imagination of all who think 
about him. His is one of the strangest of all the strange figures 
which crowd the National Portrait Gallery. Richly endowed 
with artistic instincts ; a lover of music and all the fine arts ; 
of singularly winning manners ; the comeliest man in his 
whole kingdom ; splendid in raiment, magnificent in his 
court, colossal in his personal pride, prodigal and extravagant 
beyond compare ; the King whom those who knew him in 
his youth never ceased to love ; for whose soul — not for the 
soul of Henry IV.— Whittington, for instance, left money for 
masses — this is a figure among our English kings which has 
no parallel. 

One more reruiniscence of Kennington Palace. The last 
occasion on which Richard lodged there was when he brought 
home his little bride Isabel, the queen of eight years. They 
brought her from Dover, resting on the way at Canterbury 
and Rochester. At Blackheath they were met by the Mayor 
and Aldermen, attired with great magnificence of costume to 
do honour to the bride. After reverences due, they fell into 
their place and rode on with the procession. When they 
arrived at Newington, the King thanked the Mayor and per- 
mitted him to leave the procession and return home. He 
himself, with his company, rode by the cross-country lane 
from Newington to Kennington Palace. I observe that this 
proves the existence of a path or lane where is now Upper 
Kennington Lane. At this palace the little queen rested a 
night, and next day was carried in another procession to the 
Tower. The knights rode before, and the French ladies came 
after. It is pretty to read how Isabel, with her long fair hair 
falling over her shoulders, and her sweet childish face, sat up 
and smiled upon the people, playing and pretending to be 
queen, which she had been practising ever since her betrothal. 
Needless to say that all hearts were ravished, The good 



88 SOUTH LONDON 

people of London were ever ready to welcome one princess 
after another, and to lose their hearts to them, whether it was 
Isabel of France, or Katharine her sister, or Anne Boleyn, or 
Queen Charlotte, or the fair Princess of Denmark. So great 
a press was there that many were actually squeezed to death 
on London Bridge, where the houses only left twelve feet in 
breadth. Isabel's queenship proved a pretence : before she 
was old enough to be queen, indeed, her husband was in con- 
finement ; before she understood that he was a captive, he 
was murdered, and the splendid extravagant reign was over. 
The son of the usurper, young Harry of Monmouth himself, 
desired to take the place of Richard ; his father also desired 
the match, for the sake of the dowry. Isabel, child as she 
was still, had the heart of a woman ; she had learned to love 
her handsome, courteous, accomplished lord, who died before 
he could claim her ; she refused absolutely to marry the son 
of his murderer. They tried to move her resolution by per- 
suasion ; they did not dare to force her : let us believe that 
Harry of Monmouth would not stoop to force the girl to 
marry him. There was nothing therefore left to do, but to 
send her home to what was certainly the most miserable 
court or palace in the world — that of her mad father. In the 
end, she married her cousin, the poet Charles of Orleans. 
You may read the verses which he made upon her death. 
Isabel died in childbirth in her twenty-second year. As for 
Harry of Monmouth, as all the world knows, he was obliged 
to content himself with Isabel's younger sister, Katharine ; 
we have just read about that queen, and how she stooped to 
a suitor below her own degree. I think she was made of clay 
not so fine as that of Isabel, her sister. 



THE ROYAL HOUSES OF SOUTH LONDON 89 



2. ELTHAM PALACE 

The second in our chain of suburban Palaces was the Royal 
House of Eltham, already mentioned in connection with 
Kenning^ton. The place itself seems to have been a settle- 
ment of some kind, a town or village, in very ancient times. 
In the thirteenth century it was considered of importance 
enough to receive the grant of a market day every Tuesday, 
and a Fair for three days every year, namely, the day before 
the Feast of the Trinity, the Feast itself, and the day after. 
In the fourteenth century the market day was altered to 
Monday, but the Fair remained ; in the fifteenth century 
the market day returned to Tuesday and the Fair was 
changed to three days on the Eve of St. Peter and St. Paul, 
on the Feast itself, and on the day after. The market and 
the Fair have long since been discontinued. The importance 
of both depended on the occasional presence of the Court, 
and when that was removed altogether from the place there 
was no longer any necessity for either market or Fair Day. 
Eltham then became a small agricultural village lying in the 
midst of woods, with nothing but scattered villages for many 
miles round. So long as it contained one of the recognised 
Palaces, even though years might pass by without a visit 
from the sovereign, there was, attached to the house, the 
permanent staff to a Governor or warder, with chiefs of the 
various departments and the men or assistants under them. 
The occupation of the Palace by such a staff gave the place a 
kind of garrison, and created a demand for provisions and for 
all sorts of things. On those rare occasions when the Court 
was actually in Residence at Eltham, the market had to 
furnish supplies, to which all the country round had to 
contribute ; nothing short of provisions for the maintenance 
of thousands of people daily. At Eltham the difficulty may 
have been very great ; no doubt word would be sent long 



90 SOUTH LONDON 

beforehand if the King proposed to keep Christmas there. 
The yeomen of the kitchen had the beef put in the pickling 
tubs in November — vast quantities of beef, for, Christmas or 
not, the staple food of everybody in the winter was salt beef. 
At the Palace of Kennington things were easier. It lay 
within easy reach of the London market ; so was West- 
minster. Greenwich was accessible by ships from the lower 
reaches of the Thames as well as from London. Eltham, no 
doubt, depended upon the rich and fruitful country in which 
it stood. At eight miles from London, the markets there 
were of very little use. The annals of the Palace are simple, 
rather than scanty ; in fact, there is plenty of mention made 
of the Palace, yet very little of importance is recorded con- 
cerning it. All that is recorded of it belongs to peace and 
festivity and the season of Christmas. Eltham was given by 
William the Conqueror to his half-brother Odo, Bishop of 
Bayeux and Earl of Kent. After the disgrace of Odo, and 
the confiscation of his estates, the manor belonged partly to 
the Queen and partly to the Mandevilles. Thence it passed 
into the hands of the De Vesci family. From them it 
went to the Scropes, and from them to various holders in 
succession. 

There was a Palace, or House, here of some kind in very 
ancient times. The historian says that he cannot ascertain 
when the Palace was built (see p. 74). Since the origin of 
the House is unknown, he argues that it must have been 
ancient. Now, concerning its connections with our Kings and 
Queens, there is quite a long list. All these lists would have 
to be catalogued, and even then be forgotten. For instance, 
the following list of visits I borrow from Lysons. But I can- 
not pretend that it is of much interest. 

In the year 1270 Henry III. kept Christmas at his Palace 
of Eltham with the Queen and his nobles. After this the 
name of Anthony Bee, Bishop of Durham and Patriarch of 
Jerusalem, is connected with the place. He built a great 



THE ROYAL HOUSES OF SOUTH LONDON 91 

deal, but I know not if any ruins of his yet remain. He 
died at Eltham in 131 1, presumably in the Palace, for there 
seem to have been no other buildings. Now we come back 




REMAINS OF ELTHAM PALACE, 1 796 

to the kings, and we find historical associations in plenty, 
though not of a kind which is moving or interesting. It does 
not excite our curiosity much to learn that this king or that 



92 SOUTH LONDON 

king kept Christmas here, and yet that is the kind of association 
which I have to offer. Edward the Second was often here: 
perhaps the seclusion of the place enabled him to play his 
favourite games with his followers without being overseen. 
One of his sons, John of Eltham, was born here. Ed- 
ward III., when still under age, had a Parliament at Eltham 
in 1329. In 1347 his son Lionel kept Christmas for him at 
Eltham. In 1364 he entertained here the French king John, 
his prisoner. In 1375 he held another Parliament here, 
when the Commons petitioned him to make Richard, his 
grandson, Prince of Wales. Richard the Second, as we 
should expect, regarded Eltham with a peculiar affection ; it 
was beautiful ; the buildings were splendid. It was a long 
way from the City which took upon itself to remonstrate with 
his extravagance. Three times at least he kept Christmas 
here : on the last he entertained Leo, King of Armenia, with 
great splendour and profusion. Henry the Fourth kept 
Christmas four times in the Palace. On the first, the Alder- 
men of London and their children went down from the City 
to perform a masque before the King, who received it well. 
At that moment he was certain to receive everything well 
that came from the City. On his last visit the disease broke 
out which killed him. Henry the Fifth was here once, in 
1414: Henry the Sixth once, in 1429. Edward the Fourth 
WfLS a second Founder, so much did he add to the buildings. 
Among other things, he built a new front to the Palace and 
is said to have built the Banqueting Hall itself His fes- 
tivities rivalled those of Richard the Seccni. Here his 
daughter Bridget, afterwards a nun of Dartford, was born. 
Henry the Seventh was another builder : he stayed at Eltham 
often. Henry the Eighth came here once at least, but he 
preferred Greenwich as a residence as soon as that house 
was built. Elizabeth also came here only once or twice, pre- 
ferring Greenwich, and James the First is only recorded to 
have visited Eltham once. After this time Eltham ceased 




2 -S 









94 SOUTH LONDON 

to be a Palace. In 1646 Robert Earl of Essex died here; 
the Manor was sold after Charles's death. After the Restora- 
tion it reverted to the Crown ; the rest of the history concerns 
its occupancy by private families. On the death of Charles 
the Palace was surveyed ; it is described as being built of 
brick stone, and timber ; it contained (see p. 74) one chapel, a 
hall, 36 rooms and offices below stairs, with two large cellars ; 
and above stairs 17 lodging houses on the King's side, 12 on 
the Queen's side, and 9 on the Prince's side ; and 78 rooms 
in the offices round the courtyard, which contained one acre 
of ground : the house was out of repair and uninhabitable. 
There were gardens attached to the house. A moat surrounded 
the house, of width 60 feet, except in the forest, where it was 
1 1 5 feet. The moat still exists on the north side, and can be 
traced all round. Of the buildings little remains except the 
old Banqueting Hall, a truly beautiful ruin ; the roof, with its 
fine woodwork, is happily still standing, but shored up and 
supported. The windows are mostly blocked up ; fragments 
only remain of the other buildings ; but it is said to be possible, 
in the gardens at the back, to trace out the courts and the 
foundations of the chapel and offices. The Palace is ap- 
proached by a bridge of about the same date as the Palace, 
viz. the fourteenth century. It crosses the moat, and with its 
picturesque ivy-clad arches and the Banqueting Hall on one 
side, and the Court House on the other, it is as lovely an 
approach to the ruin as could well be imagined or created. 

One of the last visits of the King to Eltham was in the 
year 1575, when Henry held one of the tournaments in which 
in his early manhood he so much delighted. This is Holin- 
shed's account of it : — 

* After the parlement was ended, the king kept a solemne 
Christmasse at his manor of Eltham ; and on the Twelfe 
night in the hall was made a goodlie castell, woonderouslie 
set out, and in it certeine ladies and knights ; and when the 
king and queene were set, in came other knights and assailed 



THE ROYAL HOUSES OF SOUTH LONDON 95 
the castell, where manie a good stripe was giuen ; and at the 
last the assailants were beaten awaie. And then issued out 
knights and ladies out of the castell, which ladies were rich 




reni.amj 






and strangelie disguised ; for all their apparell was in braids 
of gold, fret with moouing spangls of siluer and gilt, set on 
crimson sattin, loose and not fastned : the mens apparell of 



96 SOUTH LONDON 

the same sute made like lulis of Hungarie ; and the ladies 
heads and bodies were after the fashion of Amsterdam. And 
when the dansing was doone, the banket was serued in of two 
hundred dishes, with great plentie to euerie bodie.' 

There is little more to be said about Eltham, which is a 
place so beautiful that it ought to have a more interesting 
history. Kings and Courts delight me not, nor do I take 
pleasure in reading about tournaments and masques. 

There is no figure in the history of Eltham so pleasant to 
think upon as that of little Prince Richard, the lovely boy 
who was going to become such an extravagant King. One 
would like to have seen Edward entertaining his prisoner. 
King John of France ; and one wonders what sort of figure 
was played by the Armenian Leo in the presence of Richard's 
splendour : but perhaps he knew the Court of Constantinople, 
and smiled at the splendour of the barbaric north. 

Once more, how did they provide for the maintenance of so 
many guests ? To feed two thousand every day is a great 
undertaking. We are accustomed to believe that the roads in 
winter were so bad as to be impassable. Now, everything 
had to be brought there, whatever the condition of the roads. 
And they were bye-roads, not high roads. The guests, too, 
and the nobles and their retainers, had to arrive by those roads. 
As was stated above, due notice was certainly given : a vast 
quantity of salt provisions was laid down in readiness : 
for the rest, the country was fertile and well cultivated. 
The Park contained deer — but they could not kill all ; the 
Thames, only three miles away — but then, the roads ! — was full 
of salmon and every kind of fish : the banks of the lower reaches 
and those of the Ravensbourne — again, those roads ! — were 
the homes of myriads of wild birds. Still, one feels that the 
inland communications of the fourteenth century must have 
been a great deal better than those of the seventeenth century 
in order to allow of Christmas being kept in magnificence and 
profusion by two thousand people in a country village. 



THE ROYAL HOUSES OF SOUTH LONDON 97 

The views which accompany this account are taken from 
Lysons : they were engraved in the year 1796. There is not 
much difference in the present aspect : the moat has been 
opened again : the buildings represented on the south side of 
the Hall have vanished : and the place itself which had been 







used as a barn is now empty, and is only thrown open for 



visitors or the drilling of Volunteers. 



3. GREENWICH PALACE 

The Green Village lying on the slope of a gentle hill, with 
marshes on either side of it — the marsh of the Ravensbourne 
on one side, and the Woolwich or the Greenwich marsh on 
the other side of it — is as old as history itself. Its position as 
the landing-place, or point of approach, to the lands of Kent, a 

H 



98 SOUTH LONDON 

place where ships might lie, pirates and invaders might seize 
and hold as a base of operations, very early called attention to 
its natural advantages. Here the Danes encamped in ion ; 
here they brought the venerable Alphege and murdered him, 
throwing beef bones at his head. As the throwing of bones 
was a favourite evening pastime with the Danes, they probably 
meant little at first beyond a friendly reminder or an invi- 
tation to take part in the game : as the Archbishop made no 
response they threw the bones in earnest (see p. 72). The 
people of Greenwich have long since forgotten that the place 
was once a Royal Residence, and that there are historical 
memories connected with Greenwich of interest almost equal 
to those of Westminster, and far more important and interest- 
ing than those of Eltham. 

Let us perform the perfunctory task of cataloguing some 
of these memories. 

In the year 1408, Henry IV. dates his will from Greenwich. 

In 141 7 Henry V. granted the manor for life to Thomas 
Beaufort, Duke of Exeter, who afterwards died here. 

In 1443 it was granted to Humphrey Duke of Gloucester, 
with permission to fortify and embattle the manor house, and 
to enclose a park of 200 acres. This was the true beginning 
of Greenwich Palace. Humphrey rebuilt the house, which he 
called Placentia, the House of Pleasance : he enclosed the 
Park and he built a Tower on the spot where the Royal 
Observatory now stands. On his death, in 1447, the place 
reverted to the Crown. Edward the Fourth took great 
pleasure in the place and beautified it at much cost. In 1466 
he granted the Manor, Palace, and Park, to the Queen, 
Elizabeth Woodville, for life. The marriage of Richard 
Duke of York and Anne Mowbray was here solemnised with 
the usual rejoicings. 

With Henry VII. also Greenwich was a favourite place of 
residence. He added a brick front on the riverside (see p. Tj). 
Here Henry the Eighth was born on June 28, 1491. He was 



THE ROYAL HOUSES OF SOUTH LONDON 99 

baptised in the Parish Church, the predecessor of the present 
churcli. He, too, loved Greenwich above all other Palaces, 
and made it during the early years of his reign the scene of 
the festivities and entertainments which he loved so much. 
Here he married Katharine of Arragon on June 3, 15 10. 
Here he held the great tournament in which he himself. Sir 
Edward Howard, Charles Brandon, and Edward Neville 
challenged all comers. In 1 5 1 2 and in 1 5 1 3 he kept Christmas 
here ' with great solemnity, dancing, disguisings, and mummers 




GREENWICH, 1662 
{From a Drawing by Jonas Moore) 



in a most princely manner.' Holinshed gives an account of 
two entertainments held by the King at Greenwich — one a 
tournament in June, the other at Christmas : — 

* This yeare also in lune, the king kept a solemne iustes 
at Greenewich, the king & sir Charles Brandon taking vpon 
them to abide all commers. First came the ladies all in 
white and red silke, set vpon coursers trapped in the same 
sute, freated ouer with gold ; after whom followed a founteine 
curiouslie made of russet sattin, with eight gargils spowting 
water : within the founteine sat a knight armed at all peeces. 



H2 



loo SOUTH LONDON 

After this founteine followed a ladie all in blacke silke 
dropped with fine siluer, on a courser trapped in the same. 
Then followed a knight in a horsselitter, the coursers & litter 
apparelled in blacke with siluer drops. When the fountein 
came to the tilt, the ladies rode round about, and so did the 
founteine, and the knight within the litter. And after them 
were brought twi goodlie coursers apparelled for the iusts : 
and when they came to the tilts end, the two knights 
mounted on the two courses abiding all commers. The king 
was in the founteine, and sir Charles Brandon was in the 
litter. Then suddenlie with great noise of trumpets entred 
sir Thomas Kneuet in a castell of cole blacke, and ouer the 
castell was written "The Dolorous Castell," and so he and the 
earle of Essex, the lord Howard, and other ran their courses 
with the king and sir Charles Brandon, and euer the king 
brake most speares, and likelie was so to doo yer he began, 
as in former time ; the prise fell to his lot ; so luckie v/as he 
and fortunat in the proofe of his prowes in martiall actiuitie, 
whereto from his yong yeers he was giuen. . . . 

' After this parlement was ended, the king kept a solemne 
Christmasse at Greenwich, with danses and mummeries in 
most princelie maner. And on the Twelfe dale at night 
came into the hall a mount, called the rich mount. The 
mount was set full of rich flowers of silke, and especiallie full 
of broome slips full of cods, and branches were greene sattin, 
and the flowers flat gold of damaske, which signified Plan- 
tagenet. On the top stood a goodlie beacon giuing light, 
round about the beacon sat the king and fiue other, all in 
cotes and caps of right crimson veluet, embrodered with flat 
gold of damaske, their cotes set full of spangles of gold. 
And foure woodhouses drew the mount till it came before 
the queene, and then the king and his companie descended 
and dansed. Then suddenlie the mount opened, and out 
came six ladies all in crimsin sattin and plunket, embrodered 
with gold and pearle, with French hoods on their heads, and 



THE ROYAL HOUSES OF SOUTH LONDON loi 




X > 

^ I 



I02 SOUTH LONDON 

they dansed alone. Then the lords of the mount tooke the 
ladies and dansed togither : and the ladies reentered, and the 
mount closed, and so was conueied out of the hall. Then 
the king shifted him, and came to the queene, and sat at the 
banket, which was verie sumptuous.' 

Other tournaments were held here in 15 17, 1526, and 

■536. 

Here Charles Brandon married Mary, Dowager Queen of 
France. Six or seven times more Henry kept Christmas 
at Greenwich. In 1543, the last occasion, he entertained 
twenty-one Scottish gentlemen, taken prisoners, and released 
them without a ransom, being to the end, whatever else he 
was, a Prince of most Princely gifts and graces. 

Queen Mary was born at Greenwich in 15 15. Cardinal 
Wolsey was her godfather. 

King Edward the Sixth died here. 

Queen Elizabeth was born here on September 7, I533- 
She, too, spent much of her time at Greenwich. 

King James also much delighted in this place : he 
added to the brickwork by the riverside : he also walled the 
park and laid the foundations of the house afterwards called 
the House of Delight. The Queen, who received the Palace 
in jointure, carried on this House, which was atterwards 
completed by Inigo Jones for Henrietta Maria. It was 
called the King's House, the Queen's House, or the Ranger's 
Lodge. It was not until 1807 that the house was granted to 
the Commissioners of the Royal Naval Asylum. 

Separated from town by five miles of road, and four of 
river, it was thus easily accessible in all weathers and in- 
dependent of the condition of the roads. In other respects 
the position of the place was unrivalled : it was on a slope 
rising from the river in front, and from lowlands on either 
side ; it was swept night and day by the sharp fresh breeze 
that came up with the tide from the sea ; behind it, on a high 
level, lay an expanse of heath, dry a-nd wholesome ; there 



THE ROYAL HOUSES OF SOUTH LONDON 103 

was no better air to be got than the air of Greenwich ; 
that of Eltham, with its stagnant marsh and thick woods, was 
close and aguish in comparison : for view, the broad river 
rolled along the Palace front and bent round to east and west, 
so that one could see all the shipping in front ; all in Lime- 
house Reach ; and all in Blackwall Reach. As the tide ebbed 
and flowed, the navies and the trade of London passed up 
and down, outward bound or homeward bound. Sitting at 
her window, or walking on her terrace. Queen Elizabeth could 
for herself learn what was meant by the foreign trade of 
London : what was meant by the exports and imports : she 
could see every kind of ship that floats come sailing up the 
river, streamers flying, dipping the peak in salute : she could 
understand the coasting trade and the Flemish trade : she could 
ask what the hoys and ketches, the lighters, and the barges 
carried up to the Port of London in such numbers : she could 
herself, and often did, embark upon the stream in summer, 
when the sun was sinking in the west, to see the ships more 
closely and to enjoy the fresh, cool air of the river. Witness 
the sad history of Thomas Appletree. 

It was on the 17th day of July in the year 1579, about 
nine o'clock of the evening, that an accident happened 
which might have had fatal consequences. The Queen was 
taking the air in her private barge, between Greenwich and 
Deptford. With her were the French Ambassador, the Earl 
of Lincoln, and other great persons, discoursing affairs of 
state. Unfortunately for themselves, four young fellows were 
out in a small boat at the same time, and on the same part of 
the river. They were Thomas Appletree, a young servant of 
Francis Carey, two singing boys of the Queen's choir, and 
another. Thomas Appletree had possessed himself of a 
* caliver ' or arquebus, which he was so ill advised as to load 
with ball and then fire it at random up and down the river. 
One of these haphazard discharges carried the bullet straight 
to the Queen's barge, where it passed through both arms of 



I04 SOUTH LONDON 

the oarsman nearest Her Majesty. The man thus un- 
expectedly wounded, finding himself bleeding like a pig — for 
it was a flesh wound — threw himself down, bawling and 
roaring out that he was murdered. The Queen comforted him 
with the assurance that he should be properly cared for, and 
ordered the barge to be taken back to the shore at once. The 
man, being treated, speedily recovered. Meantime, who had 
dared to fire a gun at the Queen's barge ? The question was 
very quickly answered, and the Lords in Council had the four 
lads brought up before them. It appearing that the only 
guilty person was Thomas Appletree, the other three were 
suffered to depart, and Thomas was tried. It was ascertained 
that there could be no question as to the loyalty of Thomas's 
master, Francis Carey, therefore the whole guilt rested on the 
shoulders of the unlucky serving man, whose only fault had 
been foolhardiness in firing his gun at random. He was 
therefore sentenced to be hanged, with the usual accompani- 
ments, for treason. Accordingly, on the 20th day of July he 
was taken from Newgate and conducted on a hurdle with 
great ceremony to Tower Hill, and so through the postern to 
Ratcliff, where, opposite the place where the offence was 
committed, they had put up a gibbet on which the unhappy 
Thomas Appletree was to be hanged. He had made a 
dolorous journey on his hurdle, weeping copiously all the way, 
and many of the people weeping with him. Arrived at the 
gallows, he mounted the ladder, and, if the chronicler repeats 
faithfully, he made a most admirable use of the last moments 
which remained to him. It is, indeed, truly remarkable to 
observe how admirably all those who were taken out to die 
acquitted themselves, whether it was a peer to be beheaded 
for treason, or a Catholic priest to be hanged, drawn, and 
quartered for being a priest. Appletree, for his part, spoke 
so movingly that the people all wept with him. Then the 
hangman put the rope round the condemned man's neck, and 
the bitterness of death entered into his soul. But the people 



TflE ROVAL ffOUSKS OF SOUTH LOXDON 105 

cried, ' Stay ! Stay ! ' and at that moment there came riding 
up the Queen's Vfce-Chamberlam, Sir C'- .:- Hatton. 

But think not that the Vice-Chamberiain . , -proclaimed 

the royal pardon. Not at alL He left Thomas on the ladder 
for a while ; he made an oration on the heinousness of the 
offence : he made everybody kneel while he prayed for the 
safety of the Queen : and then, when all hearts were softened 
and all eyes bedewed, he pronounced the Queen's pardon, 
which the prisoner acknowledg^ed in suitable language. 
Thomas Appletree was then taken back to the Marshalsea, 
where he remained, one hopes, a ver>' short time after this. 
We may be quite sure that whatever destiny was in store for 
this young man, shooting at random with a caliver or arquebus 
would have nothing to do with it. 

Another association of Greenwich is that of Sir John 
Willoughbys departure for the Arctic seas. He was going 
to endeavour to open a new way for trade round the X.E. 
Arctic sea along the north coast of Asia. He embarked at 
Rate 1 iff Stairs : you may take boat there to this day. As he 
passed down the river, with flags and streamers fl>'ing, they 
brought out the little King Edward, who was dyings to see 
the sailing of the stout old sailor. So with firing of guns the 
ships passed on their way, and they carried the dying King 
back to his bed In a day or two Edward was dead. In six 
months, or it might be less, Willoughby was dead too, frozen 
to death in his cabin, where the Russians found him, his dead 
hand on his papers. 

If you wish to know what state was kept by Queen 
Elizabeth at Greenwich, you will find an account of it in 
Hentzner, that excellent traveller who remarked so much, 
and put all down on paper. 

* We arrived at the Royal Palace of Greenwich, reported 
to have been originally built by Humphrev', Duke of 
Gloucester, and to have received ver>' magnificent additions 
from Henry VII. It was here Elizabeth, the present Queen, 



io6 SOUTH LONDON 

was born, and here she generally resides ; particularly in 
Summer, for the Delightfulness of its Situation. We were 
admitted by an Order Mr. Rogers had procured from the 
Lord Chamberlain, into the Presence-Chamber, hung with 
rich Tapestry, and the Floor, after the English fashion, 
strewed with Hay,^ through which the Queen commonly 
passes in her way to chapel : At the Door stood a Gentleman 
dressed in Velvet, with a Gold Chain, whose Office was to 
introduce to the Queen any Person of Distinction, that came 
to wait on her : It was Sunday, when there is usually the 
greatest Attendance of Nobility. In the same Hall were the 
Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishop of London, a great 
Number of Counsellors of State, Officers of the Crown, and 
Gentlemen, who waited the Queen's coming out ; which she 
did from her own Apartment, when it was Time to go to 
Prayers, attended in the following Manner : 

' First went Gentlemen, Barons, Earls, Knights of the 
Garter, all richly dressed and bare-headed ; next came the 
Chancellor, bearing the Seals in a red-silk Purse, between 
Two : One of which carried the Royal Scepter, the other the 
Sword of State, in a red Scabbard, studded with golden 
Fleurs de Lis, the Point upwards : Next came the Queen, in 
the Sixty-fifth Year of her Age, as we were told, very majestic ; 
her Face oblong, fair, but wrinkled ; her Eyes small, yet 
black and pleasant ; her Nose a little hooked ; her Lips 
narrow, and her Teeth black (a Defect the English seem 
subject to, from their too great Use of Sugar) : she had in 
her Ears two Pearls, with very rich Drops ; she wore false 
Hair, and that red ; upon her Head she had a small Crown, 
reported to be made of some of the Gold of the celebrated 
Lunebourg Table : ^ Her Bosom was uncovered, as all the 
English Ladies have it, till they marry ; and she had on a 
Necklace of exceeding fine Jewels ; her Hands were small, 

' He probably means rushes. 

2 At this distance of time, it is difficult to say what this was. 



THE ROYAL HOUSES OF SOUTH LONDON 107 

her Fingers long, and her Stature neither tall nor low ; her 
Air was stately, her Manner of Speaking mild and obliging. 
That Day she was dressed in white Silk, bordered with Pearls 
of the Size of Beans, and over it a Mantle of black Silk, shot 
with Silver Threads ; her Train was very long, the End of it 
borne by a Marchioness ; instead of a Chain, she had an 
oblong Collar of Gold and Jewels. As she went along in all 
this State and Magnificence, she spoke very graciously, first 
to one, then to another, whether foreign Ministers, or those 
who attended for different Reasons, in English, French and 
Italian ; for, besides being well skilled in Greek, Latin, and 
the Languages I have mentioned, she is mistress of Spanish, 
Scotch, and Dutch : Whoever speaks to her, it is kneeling ; 
now and then she raises some with her Hand. While we 
were there, W. Slawata, a Bohemian Baron, had Letters to 
present to her ; and she, after pulling off her Glove, gave him 
her right Hand to kiss, sparkling with Rings and Jewels, 
a Mark of particular Favour : Where-ever she turned her 
Face, as she was going along, everybody fell down on their 
Knees. ^ The Ladies of the Court followed next to her, very 
handsome and well-shaped, and for the most Part dressed in 
white ; she was guarded on each Side by the Gentlemen 
Pensioners, fifty in Number, with gilt Battleaxes. In the 
Antichapel next the Hall where we were, Petitions were 
presented to her, and she received them most graciously, 
which occasioned the Acclamation of, Long live Queen 
ELIZABETH ! She answered with, I thank you, my good 
PEOPLE. In the Chapel was excellent Music ; as soon as 
it and the Service was over, which scarce exceeded half an 
hour, the Queen returned in the same State and Order, and 
prepared to go to Dinner. But while she was still at Prayers, 
we saw her Table set out with the following Solemnity. 

' Her Father had been treated with the same Deference. It is mentioned by 
Fox in his ' Acts and Monuments,' that when the Lord Chancellor went to appre- 
hend Queen Catherine Parr, he spoke to the King on his Knees. King James I. 
suffered his Courtiers to omit it. 



io8 SOUTH LONDON 

*A Gentleman entered the Room bearing a Rod, and 
along with him another who had a Table-cloth, which, after 
they had both kneeled three Times with the utmost Venera- 
tion, he spread upon the Table, and after kneeling again they 
both retired. Then came two others, one with the Rod 
again, the other with a Salt-seller, a Plate and Bread ; when 
they had kneeled, as the others had done, and placed what 
was brought upon the Table, they too retired with the same 
Ceremonies performed by the first. At last came an unmar- 
ried Lady (we were told she was a Countess), and along with 
her a married one, bearing a Tasting-knife ; the former was 
dressed in white Silk, who, when she had prostrated herself three 
Times, in the most graceful Manner, approached the Table, 
and rubbed the Plates with Bread and Salt with as much 
Awe as if the Queen had been present : When they had 
waited there a little while, the Yeomen of the Guard entered, 
bare-headed, cloathed in Scarlet, with a golden Rose upon 
their Backs, bringing in at each Turn a Course of twenty-four 
Dishes, served in plate, most of it Gilt ; these Dishes were 
received by a Gentleman in the same Order they were 
brought, and placed upon the Table, while the Lady taster 
gave to each of the Guards a mouthful to eat, of the particular 
dish he had brought, for Fear of any Poison. During the 
Time that this Guard, which consists of the tallest and 
stoutest Men that can be found in all England, being care- 
fully selected for this Service, were bringing Dinner, twelve 
Trumpets and two Kettle-drums made the Hall ring for Half 
an Hour together. At the end of this Ceremonial a Number 
of unmarried Ladies appeared, who, with particular solemnity, 
lifted the Meat off the Table, and conveyed it into the 
Queen's inner and more private Chamber, where, after she 
had chosen for herself, the rest goes to the Ladies of the 
Court. 

* The Queen dines and sups alone, with very few Atten- 
dants ; and it is very seldom that any Body, Foreigner or 



THE ROYAL HOUSES OF SOUTH LONDON 109 

Native, is admitted at that Time, and then only at the 
Intercession of somebody in Power.' 

On the Restoration, Charles at first resolved to pull down 
the Palace and build it anew. For this purpose he con- 
sulted various persons, and after many delays began the 
building. He only succeeded, however, in erecting what is 
now the west wing of the Hospital. But it never again 
became a Royal Residence. In 1694, the Palace was con- 
verted into a Hospital for the Royal Navy. This splendid 
institution, one of the glories of Great Britain, and a standing 
monument of the nation's gratitude to her sailors, and an ever 
present invitation to enter the navy, was closed, with that 
stupid indifference to sentiment which so often distinguishes 
the acts of our Government, in the year 1870. 



4. LAMBETH PALACE 




The now 
huge town of 
Lambeth presents 
few points of inte- 
rest either to the visitor 
or to the historian. 
There are no buildings of any 
antiquity except the Palace and 
the Church. There are no modern buildings at all worth 
notice. There have been two or three memorable houses 



no SOUTH LONDON 

which we shall do well to touch upon : but they are not so 
memorable as to deserve long description. The Bishops of 
Rochester had a house in the Marsh — the site is in Carlisle 
Place, Westminster Road, at the back of St. Thomas's Hospital, 
close to Lambeth Palace. It was in this house that, in 1531, 
a wretched man named Robert Roose, in the Bishop's service 
as cook, wilfully, as was alleged, poisoned a large number of 
people, and was boiled to death in oil — the only instance, 1 
believe, of this dreadful punishment. The wretched man was 
tied naked to a post and slowly lowered into the boiling fluid. 
Fisher was the last Bishop of Rochester who lived in this 
house. The buildings, with losses and additions, existed in some 
form or other till 1827. The house, indeed, had a strangely 
chequered history. The Bishop of Rochester exchanged it 
with the Crown for a house thought more convenient in 
Southwark, close to Winchester House. The Crown gave it 
to the Bishop of Carlisle, who seems to have let it on lease : 
thus it lost its ecclesiastical character altogether and became 
given over to entirely secular uses. It was at one time a 
pottery : then a tavern, and even a notorious and disorderly 
house : then a dancing master taught his accomplishments in 
the house : then it became a school. Finally, the gardens 
were built over, the operations disclosing many interesting 
gates and ' bits.' 

Another house was that belonging to the Duke of Norfolk : 
it was called Norfolk House, and it stood on the other side of 
the Palace, on the site now marked by Paradise Street. Here 
lived the old Duke whose life was saved by the death of 
Henry the Eighth ; here was brought up the accomplished 
Earl of Surrey whose life would have been saved had Henry 
died a few days earlier. Leland, the antiquary and scholar, 
was the Earl's tutor. The widow of Dr. Parker, Archbishop 
of Canterbury, obtained the house. Her heirs ceased to live 
in it ; the house was neglected, probably because no tenant 
could be found for it. Finally, it was pulled down. It is 



THE ROYAL HOUSES OF SOUTH LONDON iii 

interesting to note the town houses which stood upon the 
Bank from Rotherhithe to Battersea : that of the Prior of 
Lewes ; of Sir John Fastolfe ; of the Augustines ; the House 
of St. Mary Overies ; Winchester House ; Rochester House ; 
Norfolk House ; and later, the house of the St. Johns at Bat- 
tersea. There are none between Bankside and Lambeth ; 
that part of the Embankment which lies between Blackfriars 
and Westminster Bridge has no history and no associations. 




BONNER HALL, LAMBETH 



Another noteworthy Lambeth house was that called Copt 
Hall, afterwards Vauxhall, situated opposite to the gardens 
afterwards called Vauxhall. In this house the unfortunate 
Arabella Stuart lived for a time. A good deal might be 
written about Copt Hall, but not in this place. 

The houses of the Archbishop, the Bishop of Rochester, 
and the Duke of Norfolk stood close together and clustered 
round the church. The reason was the necessity of building 
on or near to the Embankment. Exactly opposite the south 



112 SOUTH LONDON 

porch of the church may be observed a small and somewhat 
decayed street grandly called the High. The name and the 
situation close to the church indicate an individual and 
separate existence of the town or village of Lambeth, of 
which this was the principal street and the centre. The 
village, in fact, did exist from very early times ; its population 
for the most part earned their livelihood as Thames fishermen. 
They were the lineal successors of that fortunate Edric to 
whom St. Peter appeared when he consecrated the Abbey. 
There was another colony of Thames fishermen lower down 
the river on Bermondsey Wall. When William the Conqueror 
is said to have burned Southwark it was the fishermen's 
cottages which he destroyed. None of these lived between 
Bankside and Westminster, which is proved by the fact that 
there is no church near the river wall at that place. The 
Thames fishermen lingered on, though the fishery grew poorer, 
until about 1820, when they were reduced to a single court in 
Lambeth. The place is described as mean and rickety, with 
neither paving nor lamps ; the woodwork of the cottages 
broken ; the roofs burst and tottering ; the windows stuffed 
with rags or mended with paper ; the children in rags ; the 
court a receptacle for everything. 

Lambeth as it is has mostly sprung into existence in the 
nineteenth century, during which its population has been 
actually multiplied by ten, and more than ten, rising from 
27,000 in i8o£ to 295,000 in 1891, an enormous increase. 
The principal reason of this development is the introduction 
of a great many industries — potteries, vinegar factories, dis- 
tilleries, salt warehouses, bottle factories, and so forth. 

Lambeth certainly cannot be called a beautiful town nor 
a desirable place of residence. The perambulator looks about 
in vain for streets noble, striking or picturesque ; he looks in 
vain for houses beautiful or ancient ; there is nothing to 
reward him. Old houses there were before the great increase 
began, but they exist no more ; the place is dull ; in parts it 



THE ROYAL HOUSES OF SOUTH LONDON 113 

is dirty ; everywhere it is without character or distinction. It 
has, however, a pretty park called after the famous Vauxhall 
Gardens, on whose site it stands. The park is new, but it is 
well laid out and planted ; already it is a pretty piece of 
greenery, and, with Kennington and Battersea Parks, offers a 
much wanted breathing place for the multitudes of that 
quarter. It is adorned, or enriched, or ennobled, by a statue 
of Henry Fawcett, who died in a house on this spot. The 
statesman, attired in a costume strictly of the period, is sitting 




RESIDENCE OF GUY FAWKES, LAMBETH 
{From ' La Belle Asseftiblee,' Nov. 1822) 

in a chair, pretending not to be aware that behind him stands 
an angel with outstretched wings, crowning him with laurel. 
He is obviously embarrassed by the situation. He feels that 
he ought to be dressed in some kind of Court costume — if he 
knew what — in order to receive the angel ; or the angel might 
have assumed a frock coat in compliment to the statesman. 
The wings were probably in the way. 

Lambeth Palace, whose history I am not going to narrate, 
plays a very considerable part in the History of England. 
In 1232 and in 1234, Parliament was held here. In 1261 



114 



SOUTPl LONDON 



and 1280 Councils were held here. In 141 2 Archbishop 
Arundell, the kindly Christian who was so anxious to 
burn heretics, issued from this Palace a condemnation as 
heretical of a great many opinions, insomuch that it became 
obviously dangerous to have any opinions at all. This, 
however, was the condition of mind most desired by the 
Church of Arundell's time and of his views. It is needless to 
recount the many occasions when Kings and Queens were 







i 





bishop's walk, LAMBETH 



entertained at Lambeth Palace. Cardinal Pole died here. It 
was sometimes a prison. Queen Elizabeth entrusted to the 
care of the Archbishop at Lambeth, Bishops Tonstal and 
Thirlby, the Earl of Essex, the Earl of Southampton, Lord 
Stourton, and many others, who were kept in honourable con- 
finement, not in dungeons or cells, but each in his own 
chamber. 

That there were prisons in every Episcopal Palace was 



THE ROYAL HOUSES OF SOUTH LONDON 115 

necessary at a time when the clergy could only be tried in 
Ecclesiastical Courts, so that the Bishops could not send their 
criminous clerks to an ordinary prison. Hence it is that we 




INTEKIOR OF THE HALL, LAMBETH PALACE 
{From an Engraving dated 1804) 



I 2 



Ii6 



SOUTH LONDON 



frequently read of a priest brought before an Ecclesiastical 
Court, but we do not learn what became of him. He was 
consigned to the prison of the House. When the Lollards 
inveighed against the corruption of ecclesiastics they accused 
the Bishops of too great leniency towards their delinquents 
and prisoners. In some cases, no doubt, the ecclesiastical 
prison was used to save a prisoner from the worst con- 
sequences of his offence. For instance, a heretic handed over 
to the secular arm had by law to be burned. Let us endeavour 
to believe that in the Archbishop's prison cells of Lambeth 
there were many who might have been burned but for the 




LAMBETH PALACE, FROM THE RIVER 

humanity which sometimes overrode even Ecclesiastical ruth- 
lessness. 

It is recorded in Archbishop Arundell's Register (Cave- 
Brown-^, * Lambeth Palace,' p. 710) that he sent for a Chaplain 
out of his prisons below his manor house at Lambeth. The 
Chaplain was a preacher licensed by the Archbishop who yet 
carried about with him a concubine. No doubt the poor man 
regarded her as his wife, and so called her, as thousands of the 
clergy did, and were held blameless by the people for so doing. 

The Palace either contains, or has at some time contained, 
the work of nearly every Archbishop in succession. For a 
full and complete history of the buildings, which would be 
outside the limits of the present chapter, the reader is referred 



THE ROYAL HOUSES OF SOUTH LONDON 117 

to the pleasant pages of the Rev. J. Cave-Browne, called 
' Lambeth and its Associations.' 

It is impossible to determine when the building of 




LOLLARDS' TOWER, LAMBETH PALACE 



Lambeth Palace began. One thing is certain, that it has 
always been an Ecclesiastical Palace. The manor of Lambeth 
belonged to the Lady Guda, sister of Edward the Confessor. 
In Domesday Book the manor contained thirty-nine men, 



ii8 SOUTH LONDON 

who with their families probably represented a population of 
about 200. They had a church, which stood on the site of 
the present church. Observe how all the old churches 
belonging to the Marsh stand on the Embankment — 
Rotherhithe ; St. Olave's ; Lambeth ; Battersea. Guda, wife 
of Eustace, Count of Boulogne, gave the manor to the Bishop 
and convent of Rochester, reserving the church. Harold, it 
is said, took it from the Bishop ; it was seized by William the 
Conqueror. William Rufus restored it to Rochester and 
added the patronage of the Church. In 1197 Hubert, Arch- 
bishop of Canterbury, gave the manor of Dartford to the 
Bishop and convent of Rochester, in exchange for Lambeth. 
Having got possession of the place, Hubert set to work to 
improve it. He obtained a weekly market and an annual 
fair ; the latter continued till the year 1757. 

What Hubert built here is uncertain, but it is certain that 
he did build some kind of residence. Stephen Langton added 
other buildings ; Boniface, A.D. 1260, found the buildings in great 
need of repair or insufficient. He was the first considerable 
builder of Lambeth. One may make a fair guess at the work 
of Boniface. We may consider it by the light afforded by the 
monastic Houses — this was not a monastery, but there was 
certainly something of the monastic spirit about the House. 
We may also take it for granted that certain essential parts 
of the building, though they might be rebuilt with greater 
splendour, would not change their position. For instance, 
when in after years we find a chapel, a cloister, a water-tower, 
or entrance from the river, and a gate-tower, or entrance 
trom the land — then these things existed from the first. 
Boniface, therefore, found a chapel in the north-west corner 
of the Palace, where it still stands ; on the west side of the 
chapel he found a water-tower with a gate opening upon a 
creek of the river by which everything was received into the 
House, the door of communication with the outer world, 
while the Archbishop's barges and boats lay moored up the 



THE ROYAL HOUSES OF SOUTH LONDON .,9 

creek. South of the chapel Boniface either built or rebuilt 
the cloisters ; south cf the cloisters he built or rebuilt his 
Hall. A Hall was absolutely necessary for a great house 







and for an Archbishop's Palace it must be a splendid Hall 
What IS now called the Guard Room was probably at first 
part of the Archbishop's private apartments, 



I20 SOUTH LONDON 

A list of the rooms then in the Palace was made in 1321. 
At that time there was the Archbishop's private Chapel, his 
Chamber, his Hall, the Chancellor's Chambers, the Great 
Chapel, the Great Gate, and certain minor apartments — a 
modest list, but the dormitories and principal bedchambers are 
not enumerated, nor is any mention made of the Library, the 
offices, the cells, or the Main Gate, all of vvhich must have 
been there. 

Then we come to the later works, of which there are more 
than we need set down — are they not written in Ducarel the 
Laborious and in Cave-Browne the Life-giver to the dust and 
ashes of ancient facts ? The principal gateway as we now see 
it is the fifteenth century work of Cardinal Morton ; it is built 
in the same style as the gateway of St. John's College, Cam- 
bridge, but is much larger and finer ; with the Church, it forms 
a most effective group of buildings. The present Water Tower 
was built by Archbishop Chicheley, but on the site of an older 
tower ; it contained, as I have said, the water gate — that is to 
say, the real gate of communication with the world. To this 
gate came all the visitors- Kings and Cardinals, Legates, 
Bishops and Ambassadors ; and to this gate came the barges 
with supplies for my Lord's table. Cranmer is said to have 
built the small tower at the north-east of the Chapel. Car- 
dinal Pole, who died here, built the Long Gallery, and prob- 
ably the piazza that supported it. Laud built the smaller 
tower on the south face of the Chicheley Tower. Let us re- 
mark here that the Tower never had any connection with 
Lollards, and that all the talk about the unhappy Lollard 
prisoners is without foundation. 

Juxon, who found the Palace a * heap of ruins,' spent his 
three years of occupancy and 15,000/. of his own money in re- 
storing the place for the honour and splendour of the Church. 
As for what has been done since that time, especially by 
Archbishop Howley, it all belongs to the detailed history of 
tne Palace. It is sufficient here to note that the Palace is a 



THE ROYAL HOUSES OF SOUTH LONDON 121 

worthy House to-day, as it was five hundred years ago, for 
the residence of the Primate. He belongs still, as his Roman 
Catholic predecessors, to a Church whose members love some 
splendour in their ecclesiastical Princes, just as thej^ love 
splendour in their churches and stateliness in their ritual. 
They do not desire to make a Bishop rich : they do desire 
that a Bishop should not be hampered by narrow circum- 




LOLLARDS' PRISON 



stances : they desire that he should be able to take the lead 
in all good works. In ancient times, the Bishop rode or sat 
in splendid state : he sat every day at a table loaded with 
costly and luxurious food : outwardly he was clothed with 
silken robes. But he touched nothing that was set before 
him : he lived hardly and abstemiously : and he wore next 
his skin a hair shirt : and for greater self-denial he suffered 



122 SOUTH LONDON 

his hair shirt to be full of vermin. That was the ideal 
Bishop of mediaeval times. Our own is much the same : a 
simple life : a splendid house : modest wants : a large in- 
come : for himself no luxuries : and an open hand. Such a 
house : such an income : we have always given to an Arch- 
bishop, whether of the old or of the Reformed Faith. 

The Chapel has at least one memory which will always 
cling to it. Within its dark and gloomy crypt Anne 
Boleyn, brought from the Tower, stood to hear her sentence. 
She was to be burned to death as an adulteress. I am not 
qualified by study of the case or by education in the weighing 
of evidence to pronounce an opinion as to her innocence. I 
believe that those who have examined into the case are 
of opinion that Anne Boleyn fell a victim to the King's 
jealousy : to his change of mind towards her : and to her 
own foolish frivolity. However, in the crypt she was persuaded 
into making some sort of avowal of a previous betrothal, in 
return for which she was spared the agonies of the stake. I 
have sometimes thought that the King must have thought 
her guilty, otherwise he would have divorced her on a charge 
of adultery, and suffered her to live. If he did not believe 
her guilty, how could he, being, above all things, a man of 
human passions, have sentenced the woman whom he had once 
loved to so horrible a death ? 

Let us note, however, that our ancestors did not regard 
death by burning with quite the same horror as is now 
common. There is a story of Rogers — or Bradford — the 
martyr. Some one once begged his intercession to save a 
"woman from burning. 'It is a gentle mode of death,' he 
replied. ' Then,' said the other, * I hope that you yourself 
will some day have your hands full of this gentle death.' 
Punishment was meant to be painful : the least painful form 
of death was that accorded to the noble — to be beheaded. If 
a man died by the executioner, it was expected that he should 
suffer. Death, in all forms, meant suffering. In disease and 



THE ROYAL HOUSES OF SOUTH LONDON 123 

in old age men suffered torture as bad as any inflicted by 
the executioner, 

I am not excusing Henry. I am only pleading that he 
must have believed in Anne's guilt or he could not possibly 
have allowed such a sentence ; and that cruel as it seems to 
us, it did not seem so cruel at that time. There is, however, 
no more sorrowful story in the whole long History of 
England, which is, alas ! so full of sorrow and of tragedy, 
than that of Anne Boleyn. 

Lambeth Palace, the only palace in the whole of South 
London, is a monument of English History from the twelfth 
century downwards. Kennington appears at intervals ; 
Eltham is a holiday house ; Greenwich practically begins 
with the Tudors. Lambeth, like Westminster or St. Paul's, 
belongs to the long history of the English people. It is a 
place little known : of the millions now, in the circle of the 
Greater London, how many, I should like to ask, have ever 
seen the interior ? Of the vast population of Lambeth, 
Battersea, and Kennington, of which it is the centre, how 
many, I wonder, know anything at all about its history or its 
buildings ? 

Of those who daily go up and down the river, who come 
and go across the Bridge, and suffer their careless and un- 
observant eyes to rest for a moment on the grey walls and 
Tower of the Palace, how many are there who know, or 
inquire, or care for the wealth of history that clings to every 
stone ? 



124 SOUTH LONDON 



CHAPTER V 

PAGEANTS AND RIDINGS 

The part which Processions of all kinds played in the 
mediaeval life is so great that one must inquire how South- 
wark fared in this respect. Where Bishops, Abbots, and great 
Lords lived there were Processions whenever one arrived or one 
departed. If the Bishop of Winchester went to the King's 
House at Winchester, it was with a great Procession of 
followers, chaplains, priests, secretaries, and gentlemen. If 
the Earl of Suffolk arrived at his town house, it was with a gaK 
lant company of gentlemen wearing his livery. If the King 
kept his Christmas at Eltham, he would be preceded by an end- 
less train of carts groaning and grumbling along the road, filled 
with household gear and followed by the troops of scullions, 
cooks, grooms and lavenders whose duty was in the kitchens, 
stables, laundries, and pantries. He himself rode with a royal 
regiment, sometimes 4,000 strong, of archers for his body- 
guard, besides the nobles, Bishops and Abbots who were with 
him for the Christmas festivities. The town itself had its Pro- 
cessions : the annual march of the Fraternity to church : the 
departure and the arrival of the pilgrims ; the Ecclesiastical 
Functions of Church and Monastic House. As for the royal 
pageants and the Lord Mayor's Ridings, it must be confessed 
that Southwark got but the beginning : that part of the 
pageant which began at London Bridge : and that the place 
itself was quite passed by and unconsidered. 

Since, however, Southwark did witness that part, I have 
drawn up a short series of notes on the sights of which the 
Borough took a share. 



PAGEANTS AND RIDINGS 125 

Thus, when Richard the Second restored the City privi- 
leges in 1392, he was met by four hundred of the citizens, all 
mounted and clad in the same livery : they invited him to 
ride to Westminster through London. 

' The request having been granted, he pursued his journey 
to Southwark, where, at St. George's Church, he was met by 
a procession of the Bishop of London and all the religious of 
every degree and both sexes, and about five hundred boys in 
surplices. At London Bridge a beautiful white steed and 
a milk-white palfrey, both saddled, bridled, and caparisoned 
in cloth of gold, were presented to the King and Queen. The 
citizens received them, standing in their liveries on each side 
the street, crying, " King Richard, King Richard ! " ' 

The rest of the pageant belongs to the City and to North 
London. Again, on the return of the victorious Henry the 
Fifth from France there was a splendid Pageant, of which 
the South got some part, namely, the following : 

' On the King's return after the glorious field of Agincourt, 
the Mayor of London and the Aldermen, apparelled in orient 
grained scarlet, and four hundred commoners clad in beautiful 
murrey, well mounted an d trimly horsed, with rich collars and 
great chains, met the King at Blackheath ; and the clergy of 
London in solemn procession, with rich crosses, sumptuous 
copes, and rriassy censers, received him at St. Thomas of 
Waterings. The King, like a grave and sober personage, 
and as one who remembered from Whom all victories are 
sent, seemed little to regard the vain pomp and shows, inso- 
much that he would not suffer his helmet to be carried with 
him, whereby the blows and dents upon it might have been 
seen by the people, nor would he suffer any ditties to be 
made and sung by minstrels of his glorious victory, because 
he would the praise and thanks should be altogether given to 
God. 

. * At the entrance of London Bridge, on thejkop of the 
tower, stood a gigantic figure, bearing in his right hand an 



126 SOUTH LONDON 

axe, and in his left the keys of the City hanging to a staff, as 
if he had been the porter. By his side stood a female of 
scarcely less stature, intended for his wife. Around them were 
a band of trumpets and other wind instruments. The towers 
were adorned with banners of the royal arms, and in the front 
of them was inscribed CIVITAS REGIS JUSTICIE (the City of 
the King of Righteousness). 

' At the drawbridge on each side was erected a lofty 
column like a little tower, built of wood and covered with 
linen ; one painted like white marble, and the other like 
green jasper. They were surmounted by figures of the King's 
beasts — an antelope, having a shield of the royal arms sus- 
pended from his neck, and a sceptre in his right foot ; and a 
lion, bearing in his right claw the royal standard unfurled. 

* At the foot of the bridge next the city was raised a 
tower; formed and painted like the columns before mentioned, 
in the middle of which, under a splendid pavilion, stood 
a most beautiful image of St. George, armed, excepting his 
head, which was adorned with a laurel crown studded with 
gems and precious stones. Behind him was a crimson tapes- 
try, with his arms (a red cross) glittering on a multitude of 
shields. On his right hung his triumphal helmet, and on his 
left a shield of his arms of suitable size. In his right hand he 
held the hilt of the sword with which he was girt, and in his 
left a scroll, which, extending along the turrets, contained 
these words, SOLI DEO HONOR et gloria. In a contiguous 
house were innumerable boys representing the angelic host, 
arrayed in white, with glittering wings, and their hair set with 
sprigs of laurel ; who, on the King's approach, sang, accom- 
panied by organs, an anthem, supposed to be that beginning 
" Our King went forth to Normandy ; " and whose burthen is 
" Deo gratias, Anglia, redde pro victoria." ' 

When Henry VI. returned after his coronation in 1432 — 

* On returning from his Coronation in France King Henry 
the Sixth was met at Blackheath by the Mayor and citizens 



PAGEANTS AND RIDINGS 127 

of London, on Feb. 21, 1431-2 ; the latter being dressed in 
white, with the cognizances of their mysteries or crafts em- 
broidered on their sleeves ; and the Mayor and his brethren 
in scarlet. 

* When the King came to London Bridge, there was de- 
vised a mighty giant, standing with a sword drawn, and 
having this poetical speech inscribed by his sidp 

* All those that be enemies to the King, 
I shall them clothe with confusion, 
Make him mighty by virtuous living, 

His mortal foes to oppress and bear them down : 
And him to increase as Christ's champion. 
All mischiefs from him to abridge, 
With grace of God, at the entry of this Bridge. 

' When the King had passed the first gate, and was ar- 
rived at the drawbridge, he found a goodly tower hung with 
silk and cloth of arras, out of which suddenly appeared three 
ladies, clad in gold and silk, with coronets upon their heads ; 
of which the first was dame Nature, the second dame Grace, 
and the third dame Fortune. They each addressed the King 
in verses similar to those already quoted, and which, together 
with those which followed, the curious will find in their 
place. On each side of them were ranged seven virgins, 
all clothed in white ; those on the right hand had baudricks 
of sapphire colour or blue, and the Others had their garments 
powdered with golden stars. The first seven presented the 
King with the seven gifts of the Holy Ghost — sapience, intelli- 
gence, good counsel, strength, cunning, pity, and dread of God : 
and the others with the seven gifts of grace, in these verses ; 
' God thee endow with a crown of glory, 
And with the sceptre of clemency and pity, 
And with a sword of might and victory. 
And with a mantle of prudence clad thou be, 
A shield of faith for to defend thee, 
A helm of health wrought to thine increase. 
Girt with a girdle of love and perfect peace. 



128 SOUTH LONDON 

* After which they sang a roundel, the burthen of which 
was " Welcome out of France." ' 

The Pageant which welcomed Queen Margaret of Anjou 
on her Coronation presented, first, at the Bridge Foot at South- 
wark, ' Peace and plenty, with the motto ' Ingredimini et 
replete terram,' — Enter ye and replenish the earth — and the 
following verses were recited : 

Most Christian Princesse, by influence of grace, 

Doughter of Jherusalem, owr pleasaunce 
And joie, welcome as ever Princess was, 

With hert entier, and hoole affiaunce : 

Cawser of welthe, ioye, and abundaunce, 
Youre Citee, yowr people, your subgets all. 

With hert, with worde, with dede, your highnesse to avaunce, 
Welcome ! Welcome ! Welcome ! vnto you call. 

Upon the Bridge itself appeared Noah's Ark, with the 
words, 'Jam non ultra irascar super terram ' (Genesis viii. 21), 
and the following verses were addressed to the Queen : 

So trustethe your people, with assurance 

Throwghe yowr grace, and nighe benignitie. 
'Twixt the Realms two, England and Fraunce, 

Pees shall approche, rest and vnite : 
Mars set asyde with all his crueltye, 

Whiche too longe hathe trowbled the Realmes twayne; 
Byndynge yowr comfortem in this adversite, 

Most Christian Princesse owr Lady Soverayne. 
Right as whilom, by God's myght and grace, 

Noe this arke dyd forge and ordayne ; 
Wherein he and his might escape and passe 

The flood of vengeance caused by trespasse 
Conveyed aboute as God list him to gye. 

By meane of mercy found a restinge place 
After the flud, vpon this Armonie. 
Vnto the Dove that browght the braunche of peas, 

Resemblinge yowr symplenesse columbyne, 
Token and signe that the flood shuld cesse, 

Conducte by grace and power devyne ; 



PAGEANTS AND RIDINGS 129 

Sonne of comfort 'gynneth faire to shine 

By yowr presence whereto we synge and seyne. 

Welcome of ioye right extendet lyne 

Moste Christian Princesse, owr Lady Sovereyne. 

On the marriage of Katharine of Aragon with Prince 
Arthur there was a great Pageant The part at the south 
entrance of the Bridge is thus described : 

* It consisted of a tabernacle of two floors, resembling two 
roodlofts ; in the lower of which sat a fair young lady with a 
wheel in her hand, in likeness of Saint Katherine, with many 
virgins on every side of her ; and in the higher story was 
another lady, in likeness of Saint Ursula, also with a great 
multitude of virgins right goodly dressed and arrayed. Above 
all was a representation of the Trinity. On each side of both 
stories was one small square tabernacle, with proper vanes, 
and in every square was a garter with this poesy in French, 
Onye soit que male pens, inclosing a red rose. On the tops 
of these tabernacles were six angels, casting incense on the 
Trinity, and the two Saints. The outer walls were painted 
with hanging curtains of cloth of tissue, blue and red ; and 
at some distance before the pageant were set two great posts, 
painted with the three ostrich feathers, red roses, and port- 
cullisses, and surmounted by a lion rampant, holding a vane 
painted with the arms of England. The whole work was 
carved with timber, and was gilt and painted with biss and 
azure.' 

The next Pageant that passed through Southwark was 
that of Charles the Second at his Restoration : 

' On the 29th of May, 1660, the Lord Mayor aod Alder- 
men met the King at St. George's Fields in Southwark, and 
the former, having delivered the City sword to his Majesty, 
had the same returned with the honour of knighthood. A very 
magnificent tent was erected in the Fields, provided with a 
sumptuous collation, of which the King participated. He 
then proceeded towards London, which was pompously 

K 



I30 SOUTH LONDON 

adorned with the richest silks and tapestry, and the streets 
lined with the City Corporations and trained bands ; while 
the conduits flowed with a variety of delicious wines, and the 
windows, balconies, and scaffolds were crowded with such an 
infinite number of spectators, as if the whole collective body 
of the people had been assembled to grace the Royal Entry. 
'The procession was chiefly composed of the military. 
First marched a gallant troop of gentlemen in cloth of silver, 
brandishing their swords, and led by Major-General Brown ; 
then another troop of two hundred in velvet coats, with foot- 
men and liveries attending them, in purple ; a third led by 
Alderman Robinson, in buff coats with cloth of silver sleeves 
and very rich green scarfs ; a troop of about two hundred, 
with blue liveries laid with silver, with six trumpeters, and 
several footmen, in sea-green and silver ; another of two 
hundred and twenty, with thirty footmen in grey and silver 
liveries, and four trumpeters richly habited ; another of an 
hundred and five, with grey liveries, and six trumpets ; and 
another of seventy, with five trumpets ; and then three troops 
more, two of three hundred and one of one hundred, all 
gloriously habited, and gallantly mounted. After these came 
two trumpets with his Majesty's arms ; the Sheriffs' men, 
in number fourscore, in red cloaks, richly laced with silver, 
with half-pikes in their hands. Then followed six hundred 
of the several Companies of London on horseback, in black 
velvet coats, with gold chains, each Company having footmen 
in different liveries, with streamers, &c. ; after whom came 
kettle-drums and trumpets, with streamers, and after them 
twelve ministers (clergymen) at the head of his Majesty's 
life-guard of horse, commanded by Lord Gerrard. Next the 
City Marshal, with eight footmen in various colours, with the 
City Waits and Officers in order ; then the two Sheriffs with 
all the Aldermen in their scarlet gowns and rich trappings, 
with footmen in liveries, red coats laid with silver, and cloth 
of gold ; the heralds and maces in rich coats ; the Lord 



PAGEANTS AND RIDINGS 131 

Mayor bare-headed, carrying the sword, with his Excellency 
the General (Monk) and the Duke of Buckingham, also un- 
covered ; and then, as the lustre to all this splendid triumph, 
rode the King himself between his Royal brothers the Dukes 
of York and Gloucester. Then followed a troop of horse 
with white colours; the General's life-guard, led by Sir 
Philip Howard, and another troop of gentry ; and, last of all, 
five regiments of horse belonging to the army, with back, 
breast, and head-pieces: \^hich, it is remarked, "diversified 
the show with delight and terror." ' 

On November 26, 1697, after the Peace of Ryswick, 
William the Third made a triumphant entry into London : 

' He came from Greenwich about ten o'clock, in his coach, 
with Prince George and the Earl of Scarbrough, attended by 
four score other coaches, each drawn by six horses. The 
Archbishop of Canterbury came next to the King, the Lord 
Chancellor after him, then the Dukes of Norfolk, Devon, 
Southampton, Grafton, Shrewsbury, and all the principal 
noblemen. Some companies of Foot Grenadiers went before, 
the Horse Grenadiers followed, as did the Horse Life-Guards 
and some of the Earl of Oxford's Horse ; the Gentlemen of 
the Band of Pensioners were in Southwark, but did not march 
on foot ; the Yeomen of the Guard were about the King's 
coach. 

' On St. Margaret's Hill in Southwark the Lord Mayor 
met his Majesty, where, on his knees, he delivered the sword, 
which his Majesty returned, ordering him to carry it before 
him. Then Mr. Recorder made a speech suitable to the 
occasion, after which the cavalcade commenced. 

' A detachment of about one hundred of the City Trained 
Bands, in buff coats and red feathers in their hats, preceded ; 
then followed two of the King's coaches, and one of Prince 
George's ; then two City Marshals on horseback, with their 
six men on foot in new liveries ; the six City Trumpets on 
horseback ; the Sheriff's Officers on foot with their halberds 



132 SOUTH LONDON 

and javelins in their hands ; the Lord Mayor's Officers in 
black gowns ; the City Officers on horseback, each attended 
by a servant on foot, viz. : the four Attorneys, the Solicitor 
and Remembrancer, the two Secondaries, the Comptroller, 
the Common Pleaders, the two Judges, the Town Clerk, the 
Common Serjeant, and the Chamberlain. Then came the 
Water Bailiff on horseback, carrying the City banner ; the 
Common Crier and the Sword-bearer, the last in his gown of 
black damask and gold chain ; each with a servant ; then 
those who had fined for Sheriffs or Aldermen, or had served 
as such, according to their seniority, in scarlet, two and two, 
on horseback ; the two Sheriffs on horseback, with their gold 
chains and white staffs, with two servants apiece ; the Alder- 
men below the chair on horseback, in scarlet, each attended 
by his Beadle and two servants ; the Recorder, in scarlet, on 
horseback, with two servants ; and the Aldermen above the 
chair, in scarlet, on horseback, wearing their gold chains, each 
attended by his Beadle and four servants. Then followed 
the State all on horseback, uncovered, viz. : the Knight 
Marshall with a footman on each side ; then the kettle-drums, 
the Drum-Major, the King's Trumpets, the Serjeant Trumpet 
with his mace ; after followed the Pursuivants at Arms, 
Heralds of Arms, Kings of Arms, with the Serjeants at Arms 
on each side, bearing their maces, all bare-headed, and each 
attended with a servant. Then the Lord Mayor of London 
on horseback, in a crimson velvet gown, with a collar and 
jewel, bearing the City sword by his Majesty's permission, 
with four footmen in liveries ; Clarenceux King at Arms 
supplying the place of Garter King at Arms on his right 
hand, and one of the Gentleman Ushers supplying the place 
of the Gentleman Usher of the Black Rod on his left hand, 
each with two servants. Then came his Majesty in a rich 
coach, followed by a strong party of Horseguards ; and the 
Nobility, Judges, &c., according to their ranks and qualities, 



PAGEANTS AND RIDINGS 133 

there being between two and three hundred coaches, each 
with six horses.' 

On September 20, 17 14, George the First was received by 
the Mayor and Corporation at St. Margaret's Hill, Southwark, 
with much the same state as that of William III. seventeen 
years before. 

The Lord Mayor's Pageants, of which there were so many, 
had nothing to do with Southwark at all, except when they 
were water processions, in which case they could be seen as 
well from the South as from the North. But, in fact, South- 
wark was wholly disregarded in all these Pageants. The 
sovereign rode through the City, not through Southwark. 
Why should the place be regarded at all ? Practically, as has 
been shown over and over again, it consisted of nothing at all 
but a causeway and an embankment, and what was once a 
broad Marsh drained and divided into fields and gardens and 
woods. 

I have set down what royal processions Southwark was 
permitted to see, but I do not suppose that among the four 
hundred citizens who went out in one livery to meet King 
Richard there was one man from Southwark, nor do I 
suppose that when nine hundred and sixty citizens, each man 
carrying a silver cup, rode through London with the Corona- 
tion procession, there was a single man from the quarter 
south of London Bridge. In other words, although in course 
of time there was appointed — never elected — an Alderman of 
the Bridge Without, at no time in these Pageants or in these 
functions was Southwark ever regarded as part of the City, nor 
were her wishes consulted or her interests considered. 

One Pageant alone — that of our own time — the splendid 
Pageant of 1897, reversed this position. As is well known, 
the Procession which celebrated the Sixty Years' Reign 
passed through the Borough as well as the City. 



134 SOUTH LONDON 



CHAPTER VI 

A FORGOTTEN WORTHY 

( HAVE to Speak of a ' worthy ' of Soiithvvark who is only 
now remembered by the curious as the alleged original of 
Sir John Falstaff. If Shakespeare drew his incomparable 
knight from a portrait of Sir John Fastolf, then one can only 
say that the portrait in no single particular resembled the 
original. Sir John Fastolf was a great and, on the whole, a 
successful soldier who spent fort)^ years fighting and com- 
manding in France. Shakespeare's knight was unwarlike, 
even cowardly ; fat : a frequenter of taverns and of low 
company, with no dignity and no authority. The only point 
that may lend colour to the theory that Fastolf was Falstaff 
lies in the fact that Fastolf was accused of cowardice at a 
certain battle, one of the many which he fought : and that on 
his return from France, the English, exasperated at their 
losses, laid the blame as they always do upon their most 
distinguished soldiers. Fastolf was as unpopular in his old 
age as any defeated general : there is no unpopularity so 
great : yet Fastolf was never a defeated general. 

Shakespeare knew no more about Fastolf than the tra- 
ditional charge of cowardice. In the First Part of ' Henry VI.* 
]v.^ presents him running away : 

Captain. Whither away, Sir John Fastolfe, in haste ? 
Fast. Whither away ? To save myself by flight. 

We are like to have the overthrow again. 
Captain. What ? Will you fly and leave Lord Talbot ? 
Fast. Ay, 

All Talbots in the world to save my life. 



A FORGOTTEN WORTHY 135 

And again in Act IV. Talbot denounces Fastolf : 

This dastard, at the Battle of Patay, 
When but in all I was six thousand strong, 
And that the French were almost ten to one. 
Before we met, or that a stroke was given, 
Like to a trusty knight, did run away. 

And he tears off the Garter which Sir John was wearing. 

Sir John Fastolf came of a Norfolk family; his people 
held the manors of Caister and Rudham. He was born in 
the year 1378, and became, after the fashion of the times, 
first a page to the Duke of Norfolk and next to Thomas 
of Lancaster, Henry the Fourth's second son. 

Caxton says that he ' exercised the wars in the royaume 
of France and other countries by forty yeares enduring.' If 
so he must have been fighting in France or elsewhere across 
the seas as early as 1400. Perhaps he went over earlier. He 
was, at least, successful in getting promotion, and promotion 
in a time of continuous war cannot be bestowed on a soldier 
incapable or cowardly. He became Governor of Veires in 
Germany and of Harfleur. He fought with distinction at 
Agincourt : at the taking of Caen and at the siege of Rouen : 
he was Governor of Conde-sur-Noireau and of other places, 
as they were taken. We find him, for instance, the Governor 
of the Bastille in Paris. When Henry V. died, in 1422, he 
became Master of the Household to the Duke of Bedford, 
Regent of France. He was Lieutenant-Governor of Normandy 
and Governor of Anjou and Maine. It is remarkable to 
observe that in spite of his great services he was not knighted 
until 141 7, when he was already forty years of age. In 1426, 
he was made a Knight of the Garter. In 1429, he won the 
day at the ' Battle of the Herrings,' when with a small com- 
pany of archers he put to flight an army. 

His record does not lead one to expect a charge of 
cowardice. Yet the charge was brought. It was after the 
Battle of Patay, in which Talbot was taken prisoner and the 



136 SOUTH LONDON 

English totally defeated. The reverse was attributed by 
Talbot to the cowardly defection of Fastolf, rather than to 
his own incompetence. Fastolf demanded an investigation, 
which was made, with the result of his acquittal. Probably 
Lord Talbot persisted in his explanation of defeat. The age, 
it must be confessed, was not exactly chivalrous. The Wars 
of the Roses, which were about to begin, brought to light 
gallant knights without truth or fidelity : perjured princes as 
well as perjured barons : accusations and recriminations : 
shameless desertions and changes of front. An evil time. If 
Lord Talbot simply tried to shift the blame of his own defeat 
upon Fastolf, it would be what other noble lords were per- 
fectly ready to do in their anxiety to escape responsibility in 
the loss of France: a disaster, as it was then thought, which 
brought the greatest humiliation on the people. As for 
Fastolf, he continued to receive posts of honour and dis- 
tinction. Yet the common people heard the reports brought 
home by the soldiers : nothing is more easy than a charge 
of treachery and cowardice : they knew nothing of the 
acquittal. To them Fastolf became in common talk the 
coward who single-handed lost France by always running 
away. 

After the Battle of Patay, Fastolfe became Governor of 
Caen : he laised the siege of Vaudmont : took prisoner the 
Due de Bar : he was twice appointed ambassador : he fought 
in the army of the Due de Bretagne against the Due 
d'Alengon : and he was ordered to draw up a report of 
the war. All this does not show much confidence in Lord 
Talbot's accusation. 

In 1440, then sixty-two years of age, he sheathed his 
sword, put off his armour and returned to England. Few 
men could show a longer, or a finer, record of war. In 144 1 
he received from the Duke of York an annuity of i^20 a year, 
* pro notabili et laudabili servicio ac bono consilio.' He spent 
the rest of his life partly in his house at Southwark and partly 



A FORGOTTEN WORTHY 



137 




WHITE HART INN, SOUTHWARK 



138 SOUTH LONDON 

in his castle of Caister, which he built himself : we may very- 
well understand that he was a man of great wealth when we 
read that the castle covered five acres of land. 

These are the achievements of the man. About his 
private life and character we have a great fund of informa- 
tion in the ' Paston Letters.' His latest biographer (' S. L. L.' 
in the ' Dictionary of National Biography ') concludes from 
these letters that Fastolf was a ' grasping man of business : ' 
that he spent his old age in * amassing wealth : ' that he was 
a testy neighbour : that his dependents had much to endure 
at his hands. All these things may certainly be inferred from 
the letters. At the same time we must consider, apart from 
the letters, the manners of the age and the conditions of the 
age. 

Let us taice the cnarges one by one. 

First, that his dependents had much to endure from 
him. 

It was not a time when dependents spent their time as 
they pleased. In a well-ordered household every man had 
his post and his work. An old Knight who had fought for 
forty years and commanded armies was not at all likely to be 
a master of a soft and indulgent kind. There is no greater dis- 
ciplinarian than the old soldier : no household is more sternly 
ruled than his. This man had not only commanded armies, 
he had governed provinces, cities, castles : he had wielded 
despotic authority : he had found it necessary to master 
every branch of human activity, including the law and the 
chicanery of lawyers : as the general in command or the 
Governor of the Province considered the interests of his 
master the King before everything, so Fastolf expected his 
dependents to consider his interests as before everything else. 
The stern old Captain, I can very well believe, looked to 
every one of his dependents for his share of work, and I can 
also very well believe that they feared him as the masterful 
man is always feared. 



A FORGOTTEN WORTHY 



139 



One of these dependents calls him ' cruel and vengeful.' 
But he gives no reasons. 

One does not carry on war for forty years in the midst of 
spies, traitors, robbers, and all the villainy of a camp without 
becoming stern and hard. As a soldier he had to harden 




SURREY END OF LONDON BRIDGE, FROM HIGH STREET, SOUTHWARK 



himself: as a governor he had to observe justice rather than 
pity as a judge it was his duty to punish criminals. I 
picture a stern, determined man, grey and worn, with hard 
eyes and strong mouth, one who looked for a thing to be 
done as soon as he commanded it, at the coming of whom 



I40 SOUTH LONDON 

his servants became instantly absorbed in work, at whose 
footstep his secretaries dared not lift their heads. 

Next we are told that he was a ' testy neighbour.' The 
letters are full of complaints about trespass, invasion of his 
rights, and attempts to over-reach him. How could a man 
choose but prove a ' testy neighbour ' at a time when the 
law was powerless and every man was trying to enlarge his 
boundaries at the expense of his next neighbour ? The land 
robber was everywhere moving landmarks and claiming what 
was not his own. Private persons, simple esquires, had to 
fortify their houses against their neighbours and to prepare for 
a siege. 'I pray you,' says Margaret Paston, 'to get some 
crossebows and wyndace to bind them with, and quarrel ' — 
ie. bolts — ' for your house is so low that ther may no man 
shoot with no long bow though he had never so much mind.' 
And she goes on to enumerate the warlike preparations made 
by her neighbour. 

Sir John Fastolf himself orders five dozen long bows, and 
quarrels for his own house in Norfolk. John Paston complains 
how Robert Hungerford, Knight, and Lord Moleyne and 
Alianor his wife, entered forcibly upon his house and manor 
of Gresham with a thousand people at their heels, and robbed 
and pillaged, turning his wife and servants into the road. 

These are things which do sometimes make neighbours 
testy. 

But he is a ' grasping man of business.' 

Hear, then, this story. The Duke of Suffolk seizes upon 
property belonging to Fastolf The judges are bribed and 
justice cannot be had. Sir John and his friend, Mr. Justice 
Yelverton, resolve to address the Duke of Norfolk, and 
to let him know that the counties of Norfolk and Suffolk 
'do stand right wildly. Without a mun may be that justice 
be hadde.' Is it a surprising thing that an old soldier should 
resolve to get justice if possible ? Is it right to call a man 
* grasping ' because he stands up in his own defence t Read 



A FORGOTTEN WORTHY 141 

again the following. * I pray you sende me vvorde who darre 
be so hardy to kick agen you in my ryght And sey hem on 
my half that they shall be givyt as ferre as law and reson 
wolle. And yff they wolle not dredde, ne obey that, then 
they shall be quyt by Blackberd or Whiteberd : that ys to say 
by God or the Devyll. And therefor I charge you, send me 
word whethyr such as hafe be myne adversaries before thys 
tyme, contynew still yn their wylfullnesse.' I see nothing 
unworthy or grasping in this letter : only a plain soldier's 
resolve to get justice or he would know the reason why. 

It is further objected that he had long-standing claims 
against the Crown, and was always setting them forth and 
pressing them. If his claims were just, why should he not 
press them ? If a man makes a claim and does not press it, 
what does it mean except that he is afraid of pressing it or 
that it is an unjust claim ? 

The estates which he owned, apart from the claims which 
were never settled, amounted altogether to a very consider- 
able property well worth defending. He had no fewer than 
ninety-four manors : there were four residences — Caister : 
Southwark : Castle Scrope, and another : there was a sum of 
money in the treasure chest of 2,643/. ^^^-^ equivalent to about 
50,000/. of our money. There were no banks in those days 
and no investments : a gentleman bought lands and plate 
and armour and weapons : he spent, as a rule, the greater 
part of his income, showing his wealth and his rank by the 
splendid manner of living. Sir John Fastolf, for instance, 
had 3,400 oz. of silver plate ; and besides, a wardrobe full of 
costly robes. 

His house stood on the banks of the river in Stoney 
Lane, which now leads from Tooley Street to Pickleherring 
Street. The Knight had good neighbours. On the east of 
St. Olave's Church was the ancient house built in the 1 2th 
century for the Earl of Warren and Surrey, and given by his 
successor to the Abbot of St. Augustine's, Canterbury. Next 



142. SOUTH LONDON 

to the Abbot's Inn came, with the Bridge House between, 
the Abbot of Battle's Inn, a great building on the river 
bank, with gardens lying on the other side of what is now 
Tooley Street. The site was long marked by ' The Maze ' 
and ' Maze Pond.' Then came Fastolf's House. There are 
no means of ascertaining the appearance or the size of the 
place. It was certainly a building round a quadrangle 
capable of housing many followers, because he proposed to 
fil'l it with a garrison and so to meet Cade's insurgents. 
Moreover, a man of such great authority and wealth would 
not be contented with a small house. On the south side of 
St. Olave's Church, nearly opposite Fastolf's house, was the 
Inn or House of the Abbot of Lewes. And half a mile 
across the fields and gardens rose the towers and walls of 
St. Saviour's Abbey, Bermondsey. Perhaps there were other 
great houses east of Sir John Fastolf's, but I think not, 
because as late as 1720 fields begin a little to the east of 
Stoney Lane. Now, though fields precede houses, houses 
seldom precede fields. A house often degenerates, but is 
rarely converted into a meadow. This, however, did happen 
with Kennington Palace. We know, for example, that the 
house called Augustin's Inn came to the Sellinger family, 
and being deserted by them was presently let out in tene- 
ments till it was pulled down and replaced by other build- 
ings. According to these indications, then, Fastolf's house 
was the last of the great houses on the east side of London 
Bridge. There is another proof that it was a large house. 
Fastolf kept a 'fleet of coasting vessels which continually 
sailed from Caister or Yarmouth to London bringing pro- 
visions and supplies of all kinds for his house at Southwark. 
This fact not only proves that his household was very large, 
but it illustrates one way in which the great houses, the 
ecclesiastical houses and the nobles' houses were victualled. 
If those whose manors lay within easy reach of a port kept 
ships for the conveyance of provisions from the country to 



A FORGOTTEN WORTHY 



143 



London it is certain that those who lived inland sent up 
caravans of pack-horses laden with the produce of their 
estates and sent up to town flocks of cattle and sheep and 
droves of pigs. 

I have spoken of Sir John's intention to make a stand at 
Southwark against the rebels under Cade. Fortunately for 







himself and for everybody with him, he was persuaded to 
retire across the river to the Tower before the rebels reached 
the gates. The story is one of the most interesting in the 
whole of the ' Paston Letters,' which, to tell the truth, unless 
one looks into them for persons we already know, are some- 
what dull in the reading. 



144 SOUTH LONDON 

When the Commons of Kent were reported to be 
approaching London in the year 1450, Sir John Fastolf filled 
his house in Southwark with old soldiers from Normandy 
and ' abyllyments ' of war. This rumour reached the rebels 
and naturally caused them considerable anxiety. So when 
they caught a spy among them in the shape of one John Payn, 
a servant of Sir John, they were disposed to make an example 
of him. And now you shall hear what happened to John Payn 
in his own words, the spelling being only partly modernised. 

* Pleasyth it your gode and gracios maistershipp tendyrly 
to consedir the grate losses and hurts that your por peticioner 
haeth, and haeth had evyr seth the comons of Kent come to 
the Blakheth,^ and that is at XV. yer passed whereas my 
maister Syr John Fastolf, Knyght, that is youre testator,^ 
commandyt your besecher to take a man, and ij. of the beste 
orsse that wer in his stabyll, with hym to ryde to the comens 
of Kent, to gete the articles that they come for. And so I dyd : 
and al so sone as I come to the Blakheth, the capteyn ^ made 
the comens to take me. And for the savacion of my maisters 
horse, I made my fellowe to ryde a way with the ij. horses ; 
and I was brought forth with befor the Capteyn of Kent. 
And the capteyn demaundit me what was my cause of comyng 
thedyr, and why that I made my fellowe to stele a wey with 
the horse. And I seyd that I come thedyr to chere with my 
wyves brethren, and other that were my alys and gossipps of 
myn that were present there. And than was there oone 
there, and seid to the capteyn that I was one of Syr John 
Fastolfes men, and the ij. horse were Syr John Fastolfes ; 
and then the capteyn lete cry treson upon me thorough all 
the felde, and brought me at iiij. partes of the feld with a 
harrawd of the Duke of Exeter ^ before me in the dukes cote 

' Jack Cade and his followers encamped on Blackheath on June ii, 1450, and 
again from June 29 to July i. Payn refers to the latter occasion. 

2 Sir John Fastolf (who is dead at the date of this letter) left Paston his 
executor, as will be seen hereafter, ^ Jack Cade. 

* Henry Holland, Duke of Exeter. During the civil war which followed, he 



A FORGOTTEN WORTHY 145 

of armes, makyng iiij. Oyes at iiij. partes of the feld ; pro- 
claymyng opynly by the seid harrawd that I was sent thedyr 
for to espy theyre pusaunce, and theyre abyllyments of vverr, 
fro the grettyst traytor that was in Yngelond or in Fraunce, 
as the seyd capteyn made proclaymacion at that tyme, fro 
oone Syr John Fastolf, Knyght, the whech mynnysshed all 
the garrisons of Normaundy, and Manns, and Mayn, the whech 
was the cause of the lesyng of all the Kyngs tytyll and ryght 
of an herytaunce that he had by yonde see. And morovyr he 
seid that the seid Sir John Fastolf had furnysshyd his plase 
with the olde sawdyors of Normaundy and abyllyments of 
werr, to destroy the comens of Kent whan that they come to 
Southwerk ; and therfor he seyd playnly that I shulde lese 
my hede. 

' And so furthewith I was taken, and led to the capteyns 
tent, and j. ax and j. blok was brought forth to have smetyn 
of myn hede ; and than my maister Ponyngs, your brodyr,^ 
with other of my frendes, come and lettyd the capteyn, 
and seyd pleynly that there shulde dye a C. or ij. (a hundred 
or two), that in case be that I dyed ; and so by that meane 
my lyf was savyd at that tyme. And than I was sworen to 
the capteyn, and to the comens, that I shulde go to South- 
werk, and aray me in the best wyse that I coude, and come 
ageyn to hem to helpe hem ; and so I gotc th' articles, and 
brought hem to niy maister, and that cost me more emongs 
the comens that day than xxvijs. 

' Wherupon I come to my maister Fastolf, and brought 
hym th' articles, and enformed hym of all the mater, and 
counseyled hym to put a wey all his abyllyments of werr and 
the olde sawdiors ; and so he dyd, and went hymself to the 

adhered to the House of Lancaster, though he married Edward IV. 's sister. His 
herald had- probably been seized by Cade's followers, and pressed into their 
service. 

' Robert Poynings, who, some years before this letter was written, had 
married Elizabeth, the sister of John Paston, was sword-bearer and carver to 
Cade, and was accused of creating disturbances on more than one occasion 
afterwards. 



146 SOUTH LONDON 

Tour, and all his meyny with hym but betts and j. (i.e. one) 
Mathew Brayn ; and had not I ben, the comens wolde have 
brennyd his plase and all his tennuryes, wher thorough it 
coste me of my noune propr godes at that tyme more than 
vj. merks in mate and drynke ; and nought withstondyng the 
capteyn that same tyme lete take me atte Whyte Harte in 
Suthewerk, and there comandyt Lovelase to dispoyle me oute 
of myn aray, and so he dyd. And there he toke a fyn govvne 
of muster dewyllers ^ furryd with fyn bevers, and j. peyr of 
Bregandyrns '^ kevert with blew fellewet (velvet) and gylt 
naile, with leg-harneyse, the vallew of the gown and the 
bregardyns viijli. 

* Item, the capteyn sent certeyn of his meyny to my 
chamber in your rents, and there breke up my chest, and toke 
awey j. obligacion of myn that was due unto me of xxxvjli. by 
a prest of Poules, and j. nother obligacion of j. knyght of xli., 
and my purse with v. ryngs of golde, and xvijs. vjd. of golde 
and sylver ; and j. herneyse (harness) complete of the touche 
of Milleyn ;'^ and j. gowne of fyn perse ^ blewe furryd with 
martens ; and ij. gounes, one furreyd with bogey ,-^ and j. nother 
lyned with fryse ; ^ and ther wolde have smetyn of myn hede, 
whan that they had dyspoyled me atte White Hart. And 
there my Maister Ponyngs and my frends savyd me, and so 
I was put up tyll at nyght that the batayle was at London 
Brygge ; ^ and than atte nyght the captyn put me oute into 
the batayle atte Brygge, and there I was woundyt, and hurt 
nere hand to deth ; and there I was vj. oures in the batayle, 
and myght nevyr come oute therof; and iiij. tymes before 

' ' A kind of mixed grey woollen cloth, which continued in use to Elizabeth's 
reign. ' — Halliwell. 

'■* A brigandine was a coat of leather or quilted linen, with small iron plates 
sewed oxv.— See Grose's Antient Armotir. The back and breast of this coat were 
sometimes made separately, and called a pair. — Meyrick. 

3 Milan was famous for its manufacture of arms and armour. 

■• < Skye or bluish grey. There was a kind of cloth so called, ' — HaUiwdl. 

s Budge fur. 

« Frieze. A coarse narrow cloth, formerly much in use, 

' The battle pn X^on^on Bridge was on the 5th of July, 



A FORGOTTEN WORTHY 147 

that tyme I was caryd abought thorough KeTit and Sousex, 
and ther they wolde have smetyn of my hede. 

* And in Kent there as my wyfe dwellyd, they toke awey 
all oure godes movabyll that we had, and there wolde have 
hongyd my wyfe and v. of my chyldren, and lefte her no 
more gode but her kyrtyll and her smook. And a none aftye 
that hurlyng, the Bysshop Roffe,^ apechyd me to the Quene, 
and so I was arestyd by the Quenes commaundment in to the 
Marchalsy, and there was in rygt grete durasse, and fere of 
myn lyf, and was thretenyd to have ben hongyd, drawen, and 
quarteryd ; and so wold have made me to have pechyd my 
Maister Fastolf of treson. And by cause that I wolde not, 
they had me up to Westminster, and there wolde have sent 
me to the gole house at Wyndsor ; but my wyves and j. 
coseyn of myn noune that were yomen of the Croune, they 
went to the Kyng, and got grase and j. chartyr of pardon.' 

Here we see the popular opinion of Fastolf ' the greatest 
traitor in England or in France : ' he who ' mynnyshed all the 
garrisons of Normandy, and Manns, and Mayn : ' he who was 
the cause of the ' lesyng of all the Kyng's tytyll and rights of 
an heritaunce that he had by yonde see.' 

The whole story is in the highest degree dramatic. Sir 
John wants to know what the rebellion means. Let one of 
his men go and find out. Let him take two horses in case of 
having to run for it : the rebels will most probably kill him if 
they catch him.. Well : it is all in the day's work : what can 
a man expect ? Would the fellow live for ever ? What can 
he look for except to be killed some time or other ? So John 
Payn takes two horses and sets off. As we expected, he does 
get caught : he is brought before Mortimer as a spy. At this 
point we are reminded of the false herald in 'Quentin Durward,' 
but in this case it is a real herald pressed into the service of 

' Fenn gives this name ' Rosse ' with two long s's, but translates it Rochester, 
from which it is presumed that it was written ' Roffe ' for Koffensis, The Bishop 
of Rochester's name was John Lowe. 



148 SOUTH LONDON 

Mortimer, alias Jack Cade. Now the Captain is by way of 
being a gentleman : very likely he was : the story about him, 
that he had been a common soldier, is improbable and 
supported by no kind of evidence. However, he conducts 
the affair in a courteous fashion. No moblike running to the 
nearest tree : no beating along the prisoner to be hanged 
upon a branch : not at all : the prisoner is conducted with 
much ceremony to the four quarters of the camp and at each 
is proclaimed by the herald a spy. Then the axe and the 
block are brought out. The prisoner feels already the bitter- 
ness of death. But his friends interfere : he must be spared 
or a hundred heads shall fall. He is spared : on f:ondition that 
he goes back, arrays himself in his best harness and returns to 
fight on the side of the rebels. 

Observe that this faithful person gets the ' articles ' that his 
master wants : he also reports on the strength of the rebellion 
in-so-much that Sir John breaks up his garrison and retreats 
across the river to the Tower. But before going he tells the 
man that he must keep his parole and go back to the rebels 
to be killed by them or among them. So the poor man puts 
on his best harness and goes back. 

They spoil him of every thing : and then, they put him 
in the crowd of those who fight on London Bridge. 

It was a very fine battle. Jack Cade had already entered 
London when he murdered Lord Saye, and Sir James Cromer, 
Sheriff of Kent, and plundered and fined certain merchants. 
He kept up, however, the appearance of a friend of the 
people and permitted no plundering of the lower sort. So 
that one is led to believe that in the fight the merchants, 
themselves, and the better class held the bridge. 

The following account comes from Holinshed. It must be 
remembered that the battle was fought on the night of Sunday 
the 5th of July, in midsummer, when there is no night, but a 
clear soft twilight, and when the sun rises by four in the morning. 
It was a wild sight that the sun rose upon that morning. 



A FORGOTTEN WORTHY 



149 



The Londoners and the Kentish men, with shouts and cries, 
alternately beat each other back upon the narrow bridge, 
attack and defence growing feebler as the night wore on. 
And all night long the bells rang to call the citizens to arms 
in readiness to take their place on the bridge. And all night 
the old and the young and the women lay trembling in their 
beds lest the men of London should be beaten back by the 
men of Kent, and these should come in with fire and sword 
to pillage and destroy. All night long without stopping : the 



■i-M>'.t., 



-,\ 







HOUSES IN HIGH STREET, SOUTHWARK, I55O 

dead were thrown over the bridge : the wounded fell and 
were trampled upon until they were dead : and beneath their 
feet the quiet tide ebbed and flowed through the arches. 

' The maior and other magistrates of London, perceiving 
themselves neither to be sure of goods nor of life well 
warranted determined to repell and keepe out of their citie 
such a mischievous caitife and his wicked companie. And to 
be the better able so to doo, they made the lord Scales, and 
that renowned Capteine Matthew Gough privie both of their 



I50 SOUTH LONDON 

intent and enterprise, beseeching them of their helpe and 
furtherance therein. The lord Scales promised them his aid, 
with shooting off the artillerie in the Tower ; and Matthew 
Gough was by him appointed to assist the maior and 
Londoners in all that he might, and so he and other capteins, 
appointed for defense of the citie, tooke upon them in the 
night to keepe the bridge, and would not suffer the Kentish 
men once to approach. The rebels, who never soundlie slept 
for feare of sudden assaults, hearing that the bridge was 
thus kept, ran with great hast to open that passage where 
between both parties was a fierce and cruell fight. 

' Matthew Gough perceiving the rebels to stand to their 
tackling more manfullie than he thought they would have 
done, advised his companie not to advance anie further 
toward Southwarke, till the dale appeared ; that they might 
see where the place of jeopard ie rested, and so to provide for 
the same ; but this little availed. For the rebels with their 
multitude drave back the citizens from the stoops at the 
bridge foot to the draw bridge, and began to set fire to 
diverse houses. Great ruth it was to behold the miserable 
state, wherein some desiring to eschew the fire died upon 
their enimies weapon ; women with children in their armes 
lept for feare into the river, other in a deadlie care how to 
save themselves, betweene fire, water, and sword, were in 
their houses choked and smothered. Yet the capteins not 
sparing, fought on the bridge all the night valiantlie, but in 
conclusion the rebels gat the draw bridge, and drowned 
manie, and slue John Sutton, alderman, and Robert Heisand, 
a hardie citizen, with manie other, beside Matthew Gough, a 
man of great wit and much experience in feats of chivalrie, 
the which in continuall warres had spent his time in service 
of the king and his father. 

*This sore conflict indured in doubtfull wise on the bridge, 
till nine of the clocke in the morning ; for somtime, the 



A FORGOTTEN WORTHY 151 

Londoners were beaten backe to saint Magnus corner ; and 
suddenlie againe, the rebels were repelled to the stoops in 
Southwarke, so that both parts being faint and wearie, agreed 
to leave off from fighting till the next daie ; upon condition 
that neither Londoners should passe into Southwarke, nor 
Kentish men into London. Upon this abstinence, this rake- 
hell capteine for making him more friends, brake up the 
gaites of the kings Bench and Marshalsie and so were 
manie mates set at libertie verie meet for his matters in hand.' 
(Hoiinshed, iii. p. 226.) 

When the rebellion was over they clapped the unlucky 
Payn into prison and tried to get out of him some admission 
that might enable them to impeach Sir John of treason. This 
old soldier was not without some love of letters. One of his 
household, William Worcester, wrote for him Cicero ' De 
Senectute,' printed by Caxton a few years later. A MS. also 
exists in the British Museum called ' The Dictes and Sayings 
of the Philosophers,' said to have been translated for him by 
Stephen Perope his stepson. 

After the Cade rebellion he returned to his house in 
Southwark but seldom. He went down into Norfolk, 
employed his ships in carrying stone and built his great 
castle of Caistor, which covered five acres. He purposed 
founding a College at Caistor for seven priests and seven 
poor folk. He assisted the building of philosophy schools at 
Cambridge : he made gifts to Magdalen College, Oxford. 
His intentions as to the College were never carried out, 
the bequest being transferred to Magdalen College, Oxford, 
for the support of seven poor priests and seven poor scholars. 
He died at the age of eighty. It was the misfortune of this 
stout old warrior that the latter half of his fighting career was 
in a losing cause : it was also his misfortune to incur a great 
part of the odium that falls upon a general who is on the 
Josing side : at the same time, in his own actions he was, 



152 SOUTH LONDON 

almost without exception, victorious : and there does not 
seem any reason why he more than any other should bear 
the blame of the English reverses. It was probably in 
deference to popular opinion that no honours were paid 
to the veteran of so many fights. Perhaps he was not 
a persona grata at Court. Certainly the story of Payn's 
imprisonment indicates some enemy in high quarters. Why 
should the Government desire to charge him with treason ? 



153 



CHAPTER VII 

THE BOMBARDMENT OF LONDON 

The Bombardment of London, now almost as much forgotten 
as the all-night battle of London Bridge, took place also on a 
Sunday, twenty years afterwards. It was the concluding 
scene, and a very fit end — to the lon^ wars of the Roses. 

There was a. certain Thomas, a natural son of William 
Nevill, Lord Fauconberg, Earl of Kent, generally called the 
Bastard of Fauconberg, or Falconbridge. This man was a 
sailor. In the year 1454 he had received the freedom of the 
City of London and the thanks of the Corporation for his 
services in putting down the pirates of the North Sea and the 
Channel. It is suggestive of the way in which the Civil War 
divided families, that though the Earl of Kent did so much to 
put Edward on the throne, his son did his best to put up 
Henry. 

He was appointed by Warwick Vice- Admiral of the Fleet, 
and in that capc^city he held Calais and prevented the despatch 
of Burgundians to the help of Edward. He seems to have 
crossed and recrossed continually. 

A reference to the dates shows how slowly news travelled 
across country. On April the 14th the Battle of Barnet was 
fought. At this battle Warwick fell. On May the 4th the Battle 
of Tewkesbury finished the hopes of the Lancastrians. Yet 
on May the 1 2th the Bastard of Fauconberg presented himself 
at the head of 17,000 Kentish men at the gates of London 
Bridge, and stated that he was come to dethrone the usurper 
Edward, and to restore King Henry. He asked permission 
to march through the town, promising that his men should 



154 SOUTH LONDON 

commit no disturbance or pillage. Of course they knew 
who he was, but he assured them that he held a commission 
from the Earl of Warwick as Vice- Admiral. 

In reply, the Mayor and Corporation sent him a letter, 
pointing out that his commission was no longer in force 
because Warwick was dead nearly three weeks before, and 
that his body had been exposed for two days in St. Paul's ; they 
informed him that the Battle of Barnet had been disastrous 
to the Lancastrians, and that runners had informed them of 
a great Lancastrian disaster at Tewkesbury, where Prince 
Edward was slain with many noble lords of his following. 

All this Fauconberg either disbelieved or affected to 
disbelieve. I think that he really did disbelieve the story : 
he could not understand how this great Earl of Warwick 
could be killed. He persisted in his demand for the 
right of passage. The persistence makes one doubt the 
sincerity of his assurances. Why did he want to pass 
through London ? If he merely wanted to get across he had 
his ships with him — they had come up the river and now lay 
off Ratcliffe. He could have carried his army across in less 
time than he took to fight his way. Did he propose to hold 
London against Edward, and to keep it while the Lancastrians 
were gathering strength? There was still one Lancastrian 
heir to the throne at least. 

However, the City still refused. They sent him a letter 
urging him to lay down his arms and acknowledge Edward, 
who was now firmly established. 

Seeing that he was not to be moved, the citizens began 
to look to their fortifications : on the river side the river wall 
had long since gone, but the houses themselves formed a wall, 
with narrow lanes leading to the water's edge. These lanes 
they easily stopped with stones • they looked to their wall 
and to their gates. 

The Bastard therefore resolved upon an assault on the 
City. Like a skilful commander he attacked it at three 
points. First, however, he brought in the cannon from his 



THE BOMBARDMENT OF LONDON 155 

ships, laying them along the shore : he then sent 3,000 men 
across the river with orders to divide into two companies, one 
for an attack on Aldgate, the other for an attack on Bishops- 
gate. He himself undertook the assault on London Bridge. 
His cannonade of the City was answered by the artillery of 
the Tower. We should like to know more of this bombard- 
ment. Did they still use round stones for shot ? Was much 
mischief done by the cannon ? Probably little that was not 
easily repaired : the shot either struck the houses on the 
river's edge or it went clean over the City and fell in the fields 
beyond. Holinshed says that ' the Citizens lodged their great 
artillerie against their adversaries, and with violent shot 
thereof so galled them that they durst not abide in anie place 
alongst the water side but were driven even from their own 
Ordnance.' Did they, then, take the great guns from the 
Tower and place them all along the river ? I think not : the 
guns could not be moved from the Tower : then the ' heavie 
artillerie ' could only damage the enemy on the shore opposite 
— not above the bridge. 

The three thousand men told off for the attack on the 
gates valiantly assailed them. But they met with a stout 
resistance. Some of them actually got into the City at 
Aldgate, but the gate was closed behind them, and they were 
all killed. Robert Basset, Alderman of Aldgate. performed 
prodigies of valour. At Bishopsgate they did no good at all. 
In the end they fell back. Then the citizens threw open the 
gates and sallied forth. The Earl of Kent brought out 500 
men by the Tower Postern and chased the rebels as far as 
Stepney. Some seven hundred of them were killed. Many 
hundreds were taken prisoners and held to ransom, ' as if they 
had been Frenchmen,' says the Chronicler. 

The attack on the bridge also completely failed. The 
gate on the south was fired and destroyed : three score of 
the houses on the bridge were fiied and destroyed : the north 
gate was also fired, but at the bridge end there were planted 
half a dozen small pieces of cannon, and behind them waited 



!56 SOUTH LONDON 

the army of the citizens. It is a pity that we have not another 
Battle of the Bridge to relate. 

The captain, seeing that he had no hopes of getting 
possession of London, resolved to march westward and meet 
Edward. By this time, it is probable that he understood 
what had happened. He therefore ordered his fleet to await 
him in the Mersey, and marched as far as Kingston-upon- 
Thames. It is a strange, incongruous story. All his friends 
were dead : their cause was hopeless : why should he attempt 
a thing impossible? Because it was Warwick's order? 
Perhaps, however, he did not think it impossible. 

At Kingston he was met by Lord Scales and Nicolas 
Fanute, Mayor of Canterbury, who persuaded him ' by fair 
words ' to return. Accordingly, he marched back to Black- 
heath, where he dismissed his men, ordering them to go home 
peaceably. As for himself, with a company of 6oo— his 
sailors, one supposes — he rejoined his fleet at Chatham, and 
took his ships round the coast to Sandwich. 

Here he waited till Edward came there. He handed over 
to the King fifty-six ships great and small. The King 
pardoned him, knighted him, and made him Vice- Admiral of 
the Fleet. This was in May. Alas ! in September we hear 
that he was taken prisoner at Southampton, carried to Middle- 
ham, in Yorkshire, and beheaded, and his head put upon 
London Bridge. 

Why ? nobody knows. Holinshed suggests that he had 
been ' roving,' i.e. practising as a pirate. But would the Vice- 
Admiral of the English fleet go off ' roving ' ? Surely not. I 
take it as only one more of the thousand murders, perjuries, 
and treacheries of the worst fifty years that ever stained the 
history of the country. There was but one complete way of 
safety for Edward — the death of every man, noble or simple, 
who might take up arms against him. So the Bastard— this 
fool who had trusted the King and given him a fleet — was 
beheaded like all the rest. 



157 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE PILGRIMS 

The town was full of those who carried in their hats the 
pilgrim's signs. Besides the ordinary insignia of pilgrimage, 
every shrine had its special signs, which the pilgrim on his 
return bore conspicuously upon his hat or scrip or hanging 
round his neck (see Skeat, Notes to Piers Plowman) in 
token that he had accomplished that particular pilgrimage. 
Thus the ampullae were the signs of Canterbury ; the scallop 
shell that of St. James of Compostella ; the cross keys and 
the vernicle of Rome — the vernicle was a copy of the handker- 
chief of St. Veronica, which was miraculously impressed with 
the face of our Lord. These shrines were cast in lead in the 
most part. Thus in the supplement to the Canterbury Tales, 

Then as manere and custom is, signes there they bought, 
For men of contra should know whom they had sought ; 
Eche man set his silver in such thing as they liked, 
And in the meanwhile the miller had y-piked 
His barns full of signes of Canterbury brought. 

Erasmus makes Menedemus ask, 'What kind of attire is 
this that thou wearest ? It is all set over with shells scolloped, 
full of images of lead and tin, and charms of straw work, and 
the cuffs are adorned with snakes' eggs instead of bracelets.' 
To which the reply is that he has been to certain shrines on 
pilgrimage. The late Dr. Hugo communicated to the Society 
of Antiquaries a paper in which he enumerated and figured a 
great many of these signs found in different places, but 
especially in the river when Old London Bridge was removed. 
Bells — Campana Tkomc^ —Ca.nterhury Bells — were also hung 



158 



SOUTH LONDON 



from the bridles, ringing merrily all the way by way of a 
charm to keep off evil. 

Every day in the summer parties of pilgrims started from 
one or other of the Inns of Southwark : there was the short 
pilgrimage and the long pilgrimage : the pilgrimage of a day : 




OLD HALL, king's HEAD, AYLESBURY 

the pilgrimage of a month : and the pilgrimage beyond the 
seas. From Southampton and at Dartmouth sailed the ships 
of those who were licensed to carry pilgrims to Compostella, 
which was the shrine of St. I ago : or to Rome : or to 
Rocamadom in Gascony : or to Jaffa for the Holy Places. 
The pilgrimage outremer is undoubtedly that which con- 
ferred the longest indulgences, the greatest benefits upon the 
soul, and the highest sanctity upon the pilgrim. 

In the matter of short pilgrimages, the South Londoner 
had a considerable choice. He might simply go to the 



THE PILGRIMS 



159 



shrine of St. Erkenwald at Paul's, orto that of Edward the Con- 
fessor at Westminster, he might even confine his devotions to 
the Holy Rood of Bermondsey. If he wished to go a little 
further afield, there were the shrines of Our Lady of the Oak ; 
of Muswell Hill ; or of Willesden. But these were all on the 
north side of London and belonged to the City rather than 
to Southwark. For him of the Borough there was the shrine 
of Crome's Hill, Greenwich, which provided a pleasant outing 




OLD HALL, AYLESBURY 

for the day : it might be prolonged with feasting and drinking 
to fill up the whole day, so that the whole family could get a 
holiday combined with religious exercises in good company 
and return home at night, each happy in the consciousness 
that so many years were knocked off purgatory. 

For the longer pilgrimages there were of course the far 
distant journeys to Jerusalem, generally over land as far as 
Venice, and then by a ' personally conducted' voyage, the 



i6o SOUTH LONDON 

captain providing escort to and from the Holy Places. 
There were also pilgrimages to Compostella : to Rome : to 
Cologne : and other places. 

For pilgrimage within the four seas, the pious citizen of 
South London had surely no choice. For him St. Thomas 
of Canterbury was the only Saint. There were other Saints, 
of course, but St. Thomas was his special Saint. No other 
shrine was possible for him save that of St. Thomas. Not 
Glastonbury: nor Walsingham : nor Beverley: but Canterbury 
contained the relics the sight and adoration of which would 
more effectively assist his soul. 




CANTERBURY PILGRIMS 

In Erasmus's Dialogue of the Pilgrimage we have an 
account of what was done and what was shown at the shrines 
of Our Lady of Walsingham and St. Thomas of Canterbury. 

' The church that is dedicated to St. Thomas raises itself 
up towards heaven with that majesty that it strikes those that 
behold it at a great distance with an awe of religion, and now 
with its splendour makes the light of the neighbouring 
palaces look dim, and as it were obscures the place that was 
anciently the most celebrated for religion. There are two 



THE PILGRIMS i6i 

lofty turrets which stand as it were bidding visitants welcome 
from afar off, and a ring of bells that make the adjacent 
country echo far and wide with their rolling sound. In the 
south porch of the church stand three stone statues of men in 
armour, who with wicked hands murdered the holy man, with 
the names of their countries — Tusci, Fusci, and Betri. . 

' Og. When you are entered in, a certain spacious majesty 
of place opens itself to you, which is free to every one. Me. 
Is there nothing to be seen there .^ Og. Nothing but the bulk 
of the structure, and some books chained to the pillars, 
containing the gospel of Nicodemus and the sepulchre of 
I cannot tell who. Mc. And what else } Og. Iron grates 
enclose the place called the choir, so that there is no entrance, 
but so that the view is still open from one end of the church 
to the other. You ascend to this by a great many steps, 
under which there is a certain vault that opens a passage to 
the north side. There they show a wooden altar consecrated 
to the Holy Virgin ; it is a very small one, and remarkable 
for nothing except as a monument of antiquity, reproaching 
the luxury of the present times. In that place the good man 
is reported to have taken his last leave of the Virgin, when 
he was at the point of death. Upon the altar is the point of 
the sword with which the top of the head of that good prelate 
was wounded, and some of his brains that were beaten out, 
to make sure work of it. We most religiously kissed the 
sacred rust of this weapon out of love to the martyr. 

' Leaving this place, we went down into a vault under- 
ground ; to that there belong two showmen of the relics. 
The first thing they show you is the skull of the martyr, as it 
was bored through ; the upper part is left open to be kissed, 
all the rest is covered over with silver. There is also shown 
you a leaden plate with this inscription, Thomas Acrensis. 
And there hang up in a great place the shirts of hair-cloth, 
the girdles, and breeches with which this prelate used to 
mortify his flesh. . . , 

M 



i62 SOUTH LONDON 

' Og. From hence we return to the choir. On the north 
side they open a private place. It is incredible what a world 
of bones they brought out of it, skulls, chins, teeth, hands, 
fingers, whole arms, all which we having first adored, kissed ; 
nor had there been any end of it had it not been for one of 
my fellow-travellers, who indiscreetly interrupted the officer 
that was showing them. . . . 

* After this we viewed the table of the altar, and the 
ornaments ; and after that those things that were laid up 
under the altar ; all was very rich, you would have said 
Midas and Croesus were beggars compared to them, if you 
beheld the great quantities of gold and silver. . . . 

* After this we were carried into the vestry. Good God ! 
what a pomp of silk vestments was there, of golden candle- 
sticks ! There we saw also St. Thomas's foot. It looked 
like a reed painted over with silver ; it hath but little of 
weight, and nothing of workmanship, and was longer than up 
to one's girdle. Me. Was there never a cross ? Og. I saw 
none. There was a gown shown; it was silk, indeed, but coarse 
and without embroidery or jewels, and a handkerchief, still 
having plain marks of sweat and blood from the saint's neck. 
We readily kissed these monuments of ancient frugality. . . . 

* From hence we were conducted up higher ; for behind the 
high altar there is another ascent as into another church. In 
a certain new chapel there was shewn to us the whole face of 
the good man set in gold, and adorned with jewels. . . . 

' Upon this, out comes the head of the college. Me. Who 
was he, the abbot of the place ? Og. He wears a mitre, and 
has the revenue of an abbot^he wants nothing but the name ; 
he is called the prior because the archbishop is in the place of 
an abbot ; for in old time every one that was an archbishop of 
that diocese was a monk. Me. I should not mind if I was called 
a camel, if I had but the revenue of an abbot. Og. He seemed 
to me to be a godly and prudent man, and not unacquainted 
with the Scotch divinity. He opened us the box in which 



THE PILGRIMS 163 

the remainder of the holy man's body is said to rest. Me. 
Did you see the bones ? Og. That is not permitted, nor can 
it be done without a ladder. But a wooden box covers a 
golden one, and that being craned up with ropes, discovers 
an inestimable treasure. Me. What say you } Og. Gold 
was the basest part. Everything sparkled and shined with 
very large and scarce jewels, some of them bigger than a 
goose's (t^%. There some monks stood about with the greatest 
veneration. The cover being taken off, we all worshipped. 
The prior, with a white wand, touched every stone one by 
one, telling us the name in French, the value of it, and who 
was the donor of it. The principal of them were the presents 
of kings. . . . 

' Hence he carried us back into a vault. There the Virgin 
Mary has her residence ; it is something dark ; it is doubly 
railed in and encompassed about with iron bars. Me. What 
is she afraid of? Og. Nothing, I suppose, but thieves. And 
I never in my life saw anything more laden with riches. 
Me. You tell me of riches in the dark. Og. Candles being 
brought in we saw more than a royal sight. Me. What, does 
it go beyond the Parathalassian virgin in wealth ? Og. It 
goes far beyond in appearance. What is concealed she knows 
best. These things are shewn to none but great persons or 
peculiar friends. In the end we were carried back into the 
vestry. There was pulled out a chest covered with black 
leather ; it was set upon the table and opened. They all fell 
down on their knees and worshipped. Me. What was in it ? 
'Og. Pieces of linen rags.' 

At Canterbury, as at Walsingham, the object of the pilgrim 
was to see the relics, kiss them, saying certain prayers pre- 
scribed, and to make offerings at every exhibition of relics. 
Th'us on beholding the precious place containing the milk of 
the Virgin, the pilgrim recited the following prayer : — 

' Virgin Mother, who hast merited to give suck to the Lord 
of heaven and earth, thy Son Jesus, from thy virgin breasts, 

M 2 



i64 SOUTH LONDON 

we desire that, being purified by His blood, we may arrive at 
that happy infant state of dovelike innocence in which, being 
void of malice, fraud, and deceit, we may continually desire 
the milk of the evangelical doctrine, until we grow up to a 
perfect man, and to the measure of the fulness of Christ, 
whose blessed society thou wilt enjoy for evermore, with the 
Father and the Holy Spirit. Amen.' 

On being shown the little chapel which was the actual 
dwelling-place of the Virgin like the Casa Sancta of Loreto, 
the pilgrim prostrated himself and recited as follows: — 

' O thou who only of all women art a mother and a virgin, 
the most happy of mothers and the purest of virgins, we that 
are impure do now come to visit and address ourselves to thee 
that art pure, and reverence thee with our poor offerings, 
such as they are. Oh that th)^ Son would enable us to 
imitate thy most holy life, that we may deserve, by the grace 
of the Holy Spirit, to conceive the Lord Jesus in the most 
inward bowels of our minds, and having once conceived Him, 
never to lose Him. Amen.' 

As regards the offerings, it was found necessary to station 
a priest at each place in order to encourage the pilgrims to 
give openly in the sight of all, otherwise they would give 
nothing at all, so great was their piety. Nay, even with this 
stimulus, there were found some who, while they laid their 
offering on ■ the altar, by sleight of hand would steal what 
another had laid down. Since pilgrimage was reduced to the 
easy performance of a journey with recitals and repetitions of 
set prayers, one easily imagines that the pilgrims would no 
more Hesitate to steal from the altar than to commit any other 
offence against morality. 

On returning from Canterbury to London the pilgrims 
were waylaid by roadside beggars who came out and sprinkled 
them with holy water, and showed them St. Thomas's shoe to 
kiss. ' In fact, what with the treasures brought home by pil- 
grims, presented to archbishops and kings, and sold by 



THE PILGRIMS 



165 



pardoners and friars, the whole country was crammed with 
rehcs ; at the great shrines as shown by Erasmus, there were 
cupboards filled with holy bones and precious rags ; but there 
were too many : the credulity of the people had been tried 
too much and too long. Erasmus shows the profound dis- 
belief that he himself, if no other, entertained for the sanctity 
of the relics. 

Thomas a Becket was canonised in 1173. Fifty years 
afterwards his remains were transferred from their original 





I5TH CENTURY 
GOLDSMITH 



RICH MERCHANT AND HIS WIFE, 
I4TH CENTURY 



resting-place by Stephen Langton, Archbishop of Canterbury, 
to the shrine prepared for them behind the high altar. 

Erasmus, whose contempt for pilgrimage is sufficiently 
indicated by the extracts quoted above, was not alone in his 
opinions. Indeed, it required no great wisdom to perceive 
that a religious pilgrimage conducted without the least atten- 
tion to the religious life was a mockery. 

Nor was Erasmus the first to make this discovery. Piers 
Plowman, long before, had expressed the same contempt for 
pilgrims : 



i66 SOUTH LONDON 

Pilgrims and Palmers plihten hem togederes 
For to seche Seint Jeme and seintes at Rome ; 
Wenten forth in heore wey with mony wyse tales. 
And hedden leve to lye al heore lyf aftir. 
Ermytes on a hep with hokide staves 
Wenten to Walsingham, and here wenches aftir. 

But there is a more serious indictment still. 

In the year 1407, a certain priest named Thorpe, a 
prisoner for heretical opinions, was allowed to state these 
opinions to Archbishop Arundel. An account remains, writ- 
ten by the priest himself, of his arguments and of the Arch- 
bishop's replies. On the subject of pilgrimage he is very 
strong. 

* Wherefore, Syr, I have prechid and taucht openlie, and 
so I purpose all my lyfe tyme to do with God's helpe saying 
that suche fonde people wast blamefully God's goods in ther 
veyne pilgrimagis, spending their goodes upon vicious hos- 
telers, which ar ofte unclene women of their bodies : and 
at the leste those goodes with the which thei should doo 
werkis of mercie after Goddis bidding to pore nedy men and 
women. Thes poor mennis goodes and their lyvelode thes 
runners aboute offer to rich priestis, which have mekill more 
lyvelode than they need : and thus those goodes they waste 
wilfully and spende them unjustely against Goddis bidding 
upon straungers, with which they shoulde helpe and releve 
after Goddis will their poor nedy neighbours at home : ye, 
and over this foly, ofte tymes diverse men and women of thes 
runners thus madly hither and thither in to pilgrimage borowe 
hereto other mennis goodes, ye and sometymes they stele 
mennis goodes hereto, and they pay them never again. Also, 
Syr, I know well that when diverse men and women will go 
thus often after their own willes, and finding out one pilgrim- 
age, they will order with them before to have with them both 
men and women that can well syng countre songes and some 
other pilgremis will have with them baggepipes ; so that every 



THE PILGRIMS 167 

timme they come to rome, what with the noyse of their synging 
and with the sounde of their piping and with the jangeling 
of their Canterbury bellis, and with the barking out of doggis 
after them, that they make more noise than if the King came 
there away with all his clarions, and many other minstrellis. 
And if these men and women be a moneth in their pilgrimage, 
many of them shall be an half year after great jangelers, tale 
tellers, and lyers.' 

' And the Archbishop said to me, " Leude Losell, Thou 
seest not ferre ynough in this matter, for thou considerest 
not the great trauel of pilgremys, therefore thou blamest the 
thing that is praisable. I say to the that it is right well 
done that pilgremys have with them both singers and also 
pypers, that whan one of them that goeth barfoote striketh his 
toe upon a stone and hurteth hym sore, and makyth him to 
blede : it is well done that he or his felow begyn then a songe, 
or else take out of his bosom a baggepipe for to drive away 
with suche myrthe the hurt of his felow. For with soche 
solace the trauel and weeriness of pilgremys is lightely and 
merily broughte forth." ' 

From the immortal company of pilgrims which left the 
Tabard Inn, High Street, Southwark, on the 2nd day of April 
in, or about, the year 1380, it remains for me to show what 
pilgrims and pilgrimage meant in the fourteenth century. 
This company met by appointment the night before the day of 
departure. They did not agree with each other, but they met 
by chance. At present, when a party starts for Palestine or 
for a voyage round the Mediterranean, the members do not 
agree to meet : they find out that a party will start on such a 
date from such a place, and they join it. Part of the business 
of the Tabard, and of other inns of Southwark, was to organise 
and to conduct such a party to Canterbury and back. As the 
ships licensed to carry pilgrims charged so much for the 
voyage there and back, including the visit to the shrine, so 
the Host of the Tabard charged so much for conducting and 



1 68 



SOUTH LONDON 



entertaining the party there and back again. That the company 
was collected in this manner and not by personal agreement, 
is shown by their mixed character ; and the ready way in 
which they all journeyed together, travelled together, and 
talked together shows that society of the fourteenth century 
was no respecter of persons, or that pilgrimage was a great 
leveller of rank. 

The following is a list of the company : — 

I. — A Knight, his Son, and an attendant Yeoman. 2. — ■ 
A Prioress : an attendant Nun : and three Priests. 3. — A 




I4TH CENTURY 
CRAFTSMAN 




^sSf\ 



I4TH CENTURY 

MERCHANT 




I4TH CENTURY 
CRAFTSMAN 



Monk and a Friar. 4. — A Merchant. 5. -A Clerk of 
Oxford. 6. A Serjeant at Law. 7. — A Franklin. 8. — A 
Haberdasher, a Carpenter, a Weaver, a Dyer, and a Tapestry 
Maker, all clad in the livery of a Fraternity. 9. — A Sailor 
and a Cook. 10. — A Physician. 11. — The Wife of Bath. 
12. — A Town Parson and a Ploughman. 13. — A Reeve, a 
Miller, a Sompnour, a Pardoner, a Maunciple, and the Poet 
himself. 

With them all went the Host of the Tabard. It is 



THE PILGRIMS 169 

generally supposed that they rode the whole way to Canterbury, 
which is sixty six miles, in a single day. Their resting places 
have, however, been found by Professor Skeat Allow them 
sixteen hours for the journey. This means more than four 
miles an hour without any halt. But so large a company 
must needs go slowly and stop often. We cannot believe that 
in the fourteenth century such a company would travel sixty- 
six miles a day over such roads as then existed, and at a time 
of year when the winter mud had not yet had time to dry. 

It is not without significance that out of the whole number 
a third should belong to the Church. Among them the 
Prioress. Madame Eglantine is a gentlewoman who might 
belong to any age : tenderhearted : delicate and dainty : fond 
of creatures : courteous in her manner : careful in her eating : 
wearing a brooch. 

On whiche was first i-writen a crowned A, 
And aftir, Amor vincit omnia. 

The Monk was a mighty hunter : a big burly man who 
kept many horses and hounds and loved to hunt the hare. 

The Friar was a Limitour, one licensed to hear con- 
fessions : a wanton man who married many women * at his 
own cost : ' he heard confessions, sweetly imposing light 
■penance : he knew all the taverns : he could play and sing : 
he knew all the rich people in his district : he carried knives 
and pins as gifts for the women :— a wholly worldly loose 
living Limitour. 

The character of the Town Parson, brother of the 
Ploughman, is perhaps the most charming of all this 
wonderful group of portraits. 

A good man was ther of religioun, 
And was a povre Persoun of a toun ; 
But riche he was of holy thoght and werk. 
He was also a lerned man, a clerk, 
That Cristes gospel trewely wolde preche \ 
His parisshens devoutly wolde he teche, 



I70 SOUTH LONDON 

Benigne he was, and wonder diligent, 

And in adversitee ful pacient ; 

And swich he was y-preved ofte sythes. 

Ful looth were him to cursen for his tythes, 

But rather wolde he yeven, out of doute, 

Un-to his povre parisshens aboute 

Of his offring, and eek of his substaunce. 

He coude in litel thing han suffisaunce. 

Wyd was his parisshe, and houses fer a-sonder, 

But he ne lafte nat, for reyn ne thonder, 

In siknes nor in meschief, to visyte 

The ferreste in his parisshe, muche and lyte, 

Up-on his feet, and in his hand a staf. 

This noble ensample to his sheep he yaf, 

That first he wroghte, and afterward he taughte ; 

Out of the gospel he tho wordes caughte ; 

And this figure he added eek ther-to, 

That if gold ruste, what shal iren do ? 

or if a preest be foul, on whom we truste, 
No wonder is a lewed man to ruste ; 
And shame it is, if a preest take keep, 
A dirty shepherde and a clene sheep. 
Wei oghte a preest ensample for to yive, 
By his clennesse, how that his sheep shold live. 
He sette nat his benefice to hyre, 
And leet his sheep encombred in the myre, 
And ran to London, un-to seynt Poules, 
To seken him a chauntrie for soules, 
Or with a bretherhed to been withholde ; 
But dwelte at hoom, and kepte wel his folde, 
So that the wolf ne made it nat miscarie ; 
He was a shepherde and no mercenarie. 
And thouth he holy were, and vertuous, 
He was to sinful man nat despitous, 
Ne of his speche daunderous ne digne. 
But in his teching discreet and benigne. 
To drawen folk to heven by fairnesse. 
By good ensample, was his bisinesse : 
But it were any persone obstinat, 
What-so he were, of heigh or lowe estat, 



THE PILGRIMS 171 

Him wolde he snibben sharply for the nones. 
A bettre preest, I trowe that nowher noon is. 
He wayted after no pompe and reverence, 
Ne maked him a spyced conscience, 
But Cristes lore, and his apostles twelve, 
He taughte, and first he folwed it him-selve. 

The Sompnour, i.e. Summoner of the Ecclesiastical Courts, 
was a scorbutic person with an inflamed face : children were 
afraid of him : he loved strong meat and strong drink. If he 
found a good fellow anywhere he bade him have no fear of 
the archdeacon's curse unless his soul were in his purse. 

Lastly, there was the Pardoner. He, too, was as jolly as 
the Monk, the Friar, and the Sompnour. He carried in his 
wallet pardons from Rome ; and relics without end : all the 
imagination in the nature of certain classes was lavished upon 
the invention of relics. Thus it required a fine power of 
imagination to show a bit of canvas as a piece of the sail of 
St. Peter's boat when Christ called him. This, however, the 
Pardoner did. Chaucer makes him reveal his own character. 

Of avarice and of swiche cursednesse 
Is al my preching, for to make hem free 
To yeve hir pense and namely unto me. 

It is not without meaning that the poet shows a Monk, a 
Limitour, and a Pardoner absolutely without the least tinge 
of religion : the first a man who dresses like a layman and 
thinks of nothing but of hunting — what, then, of the Rule ? 
The second, and the third, are both corrupt and rotten to the 
very core. If any proof were wanting that the spiritual life had 
gone out of the regular orders, these characters of Chaucer 
supply the proof. The figures in this company have been 
described, figured, illustrated, annotated a hundred times. 
They form the most trustworthy presentation of the time 
which we possess. The Knight is full of chivalry, truth, 



172 SOUTH LONDON 

honour, and courtesy : his son is well bred and lusty, is a lover 
and a bachelor. The Merchant talks eagerly and much of 
his profits : the Clerk, a poor scholar, would rather have 
books than rich robes or musical instruments : the Crafts- 
men were all well-to-do, in easy circumstances : the Physician 
was an astrologer, who understood natural magic, i.e. the in- 
fluence of the stars ; and made for his patients images : he 
knew the cause of every malady and how it was engendered 
— the profession are still liable to confuse this knowledge 
with the power of healing the malady : he was dressed in 
crimson and blue, lined with taffeta and silk — it would be 
interesting to know when physicians assumed the black dress 
of the last century. Lastly, his study was but little in the Bible. 
The Clerk of Oxford is a portrait finished to the life. 

A Clerk ther was of Oxenford also, 

That un-to logik hadde longe y-go. 

As lene was his hois as is a rake. 

And he nas nat right fat, I undertake ; 

But loked holwe, and ther-to soberly. 

Ful thredbar was his overest courtepy ; 

For he had geten him yet no benefyce, 

Ne was so worldly for to have offyce. 

For him was lever have at his beddes heed 

Twenty bokes, clad in blak or reed, 

Of Aristotle and his philosophye. 

Than robes riche, or fithele, or gay sautrye. 

But al be that he was a philosophre, 

Yet hadde he but litel gold in cofre ; 

But al that he mighte of his freendes hente, 

On bokes and on lerninge he it spente, 

And bisily gan for the soules preye 

Of hem that yaf him wher-with to scoleye. 

Of studie took he most cure and most hede. 

Noght o word spak he more than was nede, 

And that was seyd in forme and reverence. 

And short and quik, and ful of hy sentence. 

Souninge in moral vertu was his speche. 

And gladly wolde he lerne, and gladly teche. 



THE PILGRIMS 173 

Would it be .possible to find a clearer picture of what in 
those days we should perhaps tall a ' lower middle class ' 
woman than that of the Wyf of Bath ? She is dressed in all 
the splendour that she can afford : she frankly loves fine 

dress. 

A good Wyf was ther of bisyde Bathe, 

But she was som-del deef, and that was scathe. 

Of clooth-making she hadde swiche an haunt, 

She passed hem of Ypres and of Gaunt. 

In al the parisshe wyf ne was ther noon 

That to the offring bifore hir sholde goon ; 

And if ther dide, certeyn, so wrooth was she, 

That she. was out of alle charitee. 

Hir coverchiefs ful fyne were of ground ; 

I dorste swere they weyeden ten pound 

That on a Sonday were upon hir heed. 

Hir hosen weren of fyn scarlet reed, 

Ful streite y-teyd, and shoos *ful moiste and newe. 

Bold was hir face, and fair, and reed of hewe. 

She was a worthy womman all hir lyve, 

Housbondes at chirche-dore she hadde fyve, 

Withouten other companye in youthe ; 

But thereof nedeth nat to speke as nouthe. 

And thryes hadde she been at lerusalem ; 

She hadde passed many a straunge streem ; 

At Rome she hadde been, and at Boloigne 

In Galice at seint lame, and at Coloigne. 

She coude muche of wandring by the weye. 

Gat-tothed was she, soothly for to seye. 

Up-on an amblere esily she sat, 

Y- wimpled wel, and on hir heed an hat 

As brood as is a bokeler or a targe ; 

A foot-mantel aboute hir hipes large. 

And on hir feet a paire of spores sharpe. 

In felawschip wel coude she laughe and carpe. 

Of remedyes of love she knew per-chaunce, 

For she coude of that art the olde daunce. 

She is frankly sensual and self-indulgent : she likes every- 
thing that is pleasant : food, drink, love. Observe also the 



174 SOUTH LONDON 

restlessness of the woman : she can never have enough of 
pilgrimage : she loves the company : the change : the things 
that one sees : the people that one meets. She has journeyed 
three times to Jerusalem and back : once to Rome : once to 
Bologna : once to St. lago of Compostella : once to Cologne : 
apart from the English shrines. We may be quite sure that so 
good an Englishwoman would not neglect the saints of her 
own country : after Canterbury she would pilgrimise to Bever- 
ley and to Walsingham, and to Glastonbury, and many a local 
saint's shrine. She had a ready wit and could give reasons 
for everything, especially for her five marriages and her 
avowed intentions to take a sixth husband when her fifth 
should die. Yet, she declared, she honoured holy virgins. 

Let them be bred of pured whete seed 
And let us wyves eten barley brede : 
And yet with barley bred men telle can 
Our Lord Ihesu refreisshed many man. 

Many of this company play and sing. The Prioress her- 
self sings the divine service, intoning it full sweetly by her 
nose : the Limitour plays on the rote : the Miller plays the 
bagpipe : the Pardoner could sing ' full loud : ' the Knight's 
son could both sing and play. Music, in fact, as an accom- 
plishment was far more common in the fourteenth than in 
the nineteenth century. 

Chaucer seems to speak of palmers as if they were the same 
as pilgrims. The latter, however, simply journeyed from home 
to the shrine and back again : the former was under vows of 
poverty, and continually travelled from shrine to shrine. 
The Canterbury Pilgrims were not, therefore, palmers. The 
first meaning of a palmer was that he could carry a palm in 
token of having visited the Holy Land. 

When the Prioress spoke the French of Stratford le Bow 
it is not intended that she spoke bad French, but the Anglo- 
French which was spoken at Court, in the Law Courts, and 
by English ecclesiastics of higher rank. But why of Stratford 



THE PILGRIMS 



175 



le Bow? Because here was a Benedictine nunnery dating from 
the eleventh century. The beautiful little Parish Church of 
Bow was formerly the chapel of the nunnery. The Wyf 
of Bath is * gat toothed,' i.e. her teeth are wide apart : 
Professor Skeat has discovered that an old superstition 
attaches to such teeth, that, like the Wyf of Bath, those who 
have such teeth will travel far and be lucky. Popular 




"4-^ 



PEDLAR 
From the Stained Window in Lambeth Church 

superstitions are so long lived that one has little doubt 
about Chaucer's meaning. Certainly his Wyf of Bath had 
travelled far. 

Let us return to the assumption that Chaucer intended the 
pilgrimage from Southwark to Canterbury should take but one 
day. Is not this conclusion based upon the fact that the last 
tale ends a day and the journey at the same time ? Is there 



176 SOUTH LONDON 

anything to prove that the pilgrimage could have been con- 
cluded in a day there and a day back ? Why, I have said that 
it was sixty-six miles, and the roads were none of the best : 
the party jogged on, I am sure, picking their way over the rough 
places and avoiding the quagmires at a steady pace of about 
three miles an hour, with many stoppages for rest and for 
refreshment. When Cardinal Morton journeyed from Lam- 
beth to Canterbury for his enthronisation, he took a whole 
week over the journey, resting for the night at Croydon, 
Knole, Maidstone, Charing, and Chartham. Surely, if a com- 
pany of pilgrims could accomplish the distance in a day, the 
Archbishop would not take so much as six days Add to 
these considerations that Chaucer is a perfectly ' sane ' writer : 
his work hangs together : it ,would have been impossible to get 
through all those stories with the intervals between and the 
times for rest in a single day. 

Another point occurs. There was at one time- -I think 
in the early days of pilgrimage — a special service appointed 
for the departure of pilgrims — a kind of consecration of the 
pilgrimage. There is no hint of such a service in Chaucer or 
in any other writer of the time, so far as I know. There is 
none in the Pilgrimage of Felix Fabri of the sixteenth century. 
One may suppose, therefore, that the service had been allowed 
to drop out of use. Indeed, the original character of the 
pilgrimage as a thing to be approached in an altogether 
reverential and religious spirit had quite gone out of it even 
when Chaucer wrote, not to speak of Erasmus. 

The Canterbury Tales, if they are supposed to represent the 
manner of talk among the better class of people at that time, are 
curiously modern. Witness the description of the Parson and 
the Parson's Tale, which is a sermon : witness also the contempt 
and hatred of the poet for the shrines of religion : the impostor 
with his relics : the Sompnour and the Friar. Chaucer makes 
the two latter tell stories reflecting on each other, such great love 
had these ecclesiastics between themselves. The poet through 



THE PILGRIMS 



177 



his Parson preaches a noble form of religion without worry- 
over doctrine. The Parson promises, when he begins : 

I wol yow telle a mery tale in prose 

To knitte up al this feeste, and make an ende. 

And lesu, for His grace, wit me sende 

To shewe yow the wey, in this viage, 

Of thilke parfit glorious pilgrimage 

That highte lerusalem celestial — 

and preaches a sermon on man's heavenward pilgrimage, 
taking for his text the passage of Jeremiah, vi. 16 : ' Stand 




MINSTRELS A.D. I48O 

ye in the ways, and see, and ask for the old paths where is the 
good way, and walk therein, and ye shall find rest for your 
souls.' 

The priest Thorpe was too hard upon pilgrims. So 
was Erasmus. The riding all together : the festive meals at 
the inn : the mixture of men and women of all conditions : 

N 



178 SOUTH LONDON 

the change of thought and scene — could not but be useful and 
beneficial in the monotonous life of the time. That there 
were scandals : that on the way there were drinking and 
revelry, with the ' wanton songs ' of which Thorpe complains : 
that there was an idle parade of pretended relics, and an 
assumption of virtues and miracles for these relics : we can 
also very well believe : but on the whole it seems a pity that, 
when all the relics, with as much wood of the True Cross as 
would load a big ship, were gathered together and burned, 
something was not introduced to take the place of pilgrimages 
and make the people move about and get acquainted with 
each other. 

What, to repeat, said Archbishop Arundel to Thorpe the 
heretic ? 

' Leude losell, thou seest not ferre ynough in this matter, 
for thou considerest not the great trauell of pilgremys, there- 
fore thou blamest that thing that is praisable. 1 say to the 
that it is right well done, that pilgremys have with them both 
syngers and also pypers, that whan one of them that goeth 
barfoote striketh his toe upon a stone and hurteth hym sore, 
and maketh hym to blede : it is well done that he or his 
felow begyn then a songe or else take out of his bosom a 
baggepipe for to drive away with soche myrthe the hurt of 
his felow. For with sochc solace the trauell and werinesse of 
pilgremys is lightely and merily broughte forth.' 



179 



CHAPTER IX 

THE LADY FAIR 

The fairs of London were at one time many in number. The 
most ancient was that of St. Bartholomew, held in August, 
and annexed to the Priory by Henry I. St. James's F'air was 
held for the benefit of St. James's Lazar House : there was a 
Fair on Tower Hill, granted by Edward HI. to St. Katherine's 
Hospital : there was the Fair at Tothill Fields, founded by 
Henry HI. : on the South side there were Fairs at Charlton — 
the Horse Fair : at Greenwich : at Camberwell : at Peckham : 
at Lambeth. The Lady Fair, or the Southwark Fair, was of 
comparatively late foundation, having been established in the 
year 1462 by a Charter of Edward IV. empowering the City of 
London to hold a Fair in Southwark every year on the 7th, 8th, 
and 9th days of September, with * all the liberties to such fairs 
appertaining,' together with a Court of Pie Powder. Some of 
the mediaeval fairs were held for the sale of special goods : that 
of Cloth Fair, Bartholomew's, for instance : that of Croydon 
Cherry Fair : that of Maidstone for hops : that of Royston for 
cheese. Most of them, however, were general Fairs held for 
the sale of all kinds of goods : the shops were booths arranged 
in order side by side, and in streets. One street was for wool 
and woollen goods : another for hardware : another for spices : 
another for silks, and so forth. The Fair did no harm to the 
trade of the nearest town, for the simple reason that most 
towns had no trade except in provisions and drink. To the 
Fair people came from all quarters to buy or to sell : the 
country housewife laid in her stores of spices, sugar, wine, 

N2 



i8o SOUTH LONDON 

furs, silks, ribbons, gloves, and everything that she could not 
make at home, in these fairs. The Lady Fair of South- 
wark, for instance, drew the people from all parts of the country 
within reach, but mostly from Clapham Wandsworth, Streat- 
ham, and Tooting, to buy their stores for the coming year. 
There was always, from the beginning, something of a festive 
nature about a Fair : the merry crowd suggested feasting and 
good company : the drinking tempted one on every side : 
there were eating booths as well, and gambling booths, and dan- 
cing booths ; and in every one there was music and singing. 

When internal communications were improved, and people 
couU easily ride or drive to the neighbouring town, the 
permanent shop replaced the temporary booth, and the original 
purpose of the Fair was lost. Then it became, and continued 
until the end, merely a placeof amusement, and, until it became 
riotous, a place of excellent amusement. Nothing is more 
ancient or more permanent than the arts and tricks and clever- 
nesses of the show folk. I have elsewhere remarked on the 
singular fact that the comic actor never ceases out of the land : 
I do not mean the man who can play a comic part to the 
admiration of beholders, but the man who has a genius for 
bringing out the comic character in every part and in every 
situation. It is the same thing with the juggler, the tumbler, 
the posturer, the dancer on the rope and wire, the trainer and 
teacher of animals. Dogs, monkeys, bears, horses, were all 
trained to perform tricks : women danced on the tight rope : 
jugglers tossed knives and balls : men fouglit with quarterstafif, 
single-sticks, rapier, or fist : there were exhibitions of strange 
monsters : there were strange creatures. The nature of the 
show was proclaimed by a large painted canvas hung outside 
the booth. 

Evelyn, writing on the 13th of September, 1660, says : * I 
saw in Southwark at St. Margaret's Faire, monkies and asses 
dance and do other feates of activity on ye tight rope ; they 
were gallantly clad a la mode, went upright, saluted the 



THE LADY FAIR 



8i 



company, bowing and pulling off their hats ; they saluted one 
another with as good a grace as if instructed by a dancing- 
master. They turn'd heels over head with a basket having 
eggs in it without breaking any ; also with lighted candles in 




BOOTH, SOUTHWARK FAIR 



their hands and on their heads without extinguishing them, 
and with vessels of water without spilling a drop. I also saw 
an Italian wench daunce and performe all the tricks of ye 
tight rope to admiration ; all the Court went to see her. Like- 



i82 SOUTH LONDON 

wise here was a man who tooke up a piece of iron cannon of 
about 400 lb. weight with the haire of his head onely.' 

Pepys twice mentions Southwark Fair. The first occasion 
was on September 11, 1660. He only says : ' Landing at the 
Bear at the Bridge Foot, we saw Southwark Fair.' Eight 
years later he pays the Fair a second visit, of which he gives 
the following account : 

*2i September, 1668. To Southwark Fair, very dirty, 
and there saw the puppet-show of Whittington, which is 
pretty to see ; and how that idle thing do work upon people 
that see it, and even myself too ! And thence to Jacob 
Hall's dancing on the ropes, where I saw such action as I 
never saw before, and mightily worth seeing ; and here took 
acquaintance with a fellow who carried me to a tavern, 
whither came the music of this booth, and by and by Jacob 
Hall himself, with whom I had a mind to speak, whether he 
ever had any mischief by falls in his time. He told me, " Yes, 
many, but never to the breaking of a limb." He seems a 
mighty strong man. So giving them a bottle or two of wine, 
I away.' 

Hogarth has preserved for us and for our posterity a faithful 
picture of Lady Fair as it was in the year 1733. As it was 
in the daytime, remember, not the evening. Hogarth did not 
shrink from depicting scenes because they were brutal, or 
debauched — the pen that drew the Rake's midnight orgies 
could not plead that anything was too coarse or violent or 
abandoned for representation. Had Hogarth drawn a picture 
of the Fair in the evening as well as the afternoon we should 
have known why the City grew more and more disgusted at 
the orgies of the Lady Fair until it became impossible to 
tolerate it any longer. 

The Fair was held in the open street, between 
St. Margaret's Hill and St George's Church. Beyond 
St. George's Church was open country, with a few houses, 
&c., as shown in Hogarth's picture which appeared in 1733. 



THE LADY FAIR 183 

That part of the Fair which is shown contains two theatrical 
booths, Punch's opera, and a waxwork. At one of the theatres, 
that of Lee and Harper, is about to be performed Elkanah 
Settle's Droll of * The Siege of Troy.' At the other Theatre, 
there is a great show cloth called the Stage Mutiny, referring 
to a recent dispute at Drury Lane, and the piece promised is the 
* Fall of Bajazet.' The youngest and most beautiful of the 
actresses is out before the Booth with a drum, a black boy 
playing a cornet, and an actor dressed for the principal part 
with a magnificent wig and a towering plumed helmet 
Alas ! the great man is arrested at the moment of taking the 
picture: at the same moment the stage outside the booth 
gives way, and actors and actresses are precipitated headlong : 
there will be no performance this day of The Fall of Bajazet.' 
There is a peep show in the picture : Figg the Prizefighter 
rides across the stage, his wig off, so as to show the wounds he 
has received : the dwarf Savoyard plays his bagpipe and 
makes his dolls jump: there is the cook's shop under the 
falling stage : the rope dancer Violante tumbles on the slack 
rope : Cardman the aerial performer descends from the tower 
of St. George's : a quack eats lighted tow : the conjurer 
shows some of his tricks outside, but promises marvels inside 
the booth ; the rustics gaze in speechless admiration in the 
face of the drummer-actress : beyond, we see the beginning 
of the line of booths, where everything was sold that was 
of no value— toys, chapbooks, gingerbread, ribbons, cakes, 
whips, canes, snuff-boxes, tobacco-boxes, worthless rings, 
cloth slippers, night-caps, shoe laces, buckles, soap by the 
yard, singing birds and cages for them, tinder-boxes, pewter 
platters and mugs. All day long the noise went on : it began 
at noon : the people came from the country and from the 
city : they dined in one of the booths, off roast sucking pig, 
for choice, a diet consecrated to all the Fairs from time 
immemorial : the children were brought and treated to a 
fairing, the peep-show, and the play, and some gingerbread. 



i84 SOUTH LONDON 

In the afternoon the country lads wrestled for a hat — you can 
see the hat in the picture ; and the girls ran a race for a 
smock — you can see the smock in the picture. When the 
sun grew low the children were taken home, and the real fun 
of the fair began. Then all the quiet people within hearing 
stopped their ears : and all the decent people ran away : and 
the prentices, the rustics, the roughs of the Mint with their 
correspondencies of the other sex, had their own way until 
the weary players put out their footlights and lay down to 
sleep as they could among the properties and scenes of their 
theatre, and the people of the booths put their wares under the 
counters and lay down to sleep upon them like the grocers' 
assistants. And then, one supposes, the prentices, the rustics, 
and the rogues went home again. And in the morning 
repentance and an aching head, and an empty purse. 

We may take it that all the amusements and shows which 
were brought out for Bartholomew Fair, and for May Fair 
while it lasted, were also exhibited at Southwark. 

The ' droll,' which was a kind of acting in dumbshow to 
music and with singing, was popular ; dancing of all kinds 
formed a large part of the Fair. In Frost's 'Old Showman,' 
there is an advertisement of dancing in a booth : 

'THOMAS DALE, Drawer at the Crown Tavern at 
Aldgate, keepeth the TURK'S HEAD Musick Booth, in 
Smithfield Rounds, over against the Greyhound Inn, during 
the time of Bartholomew Fair, Where is a Glass of good Wine, 
Mum, Syder, Beer, Ale, and all other Sorts of Liquors, to be 
Sold ; and vvhere you will likewise be entertained with good 
Musick, Singing and Dancing. You will see a Scaramouch 
Dance, the Italian Punch's Dance, the Quarter Staff, the 
Antick, the Countryman and Countrywoman's Dance, and 
the Merry Cuckolds of Hogsden. 

* Also a young Man that dances an Entry, Salabrand, and 
Jigg, and a Woman that dances with Six Naked Rapiers, that 
we Challenge the whole Fair to do the like. There is likewise 



THE LADY FAIR 185 

a Young Woman that Dances with Fourteen Glasses on the 
Backs and Palms of her Hands, and turns round with them 
above an Hundred Times as fast as a Windmill turns ; and 
another Young Man that Dances a Jigg incomparably well 
to the Admiration of all Spectators ! Vivat Rex\ ! ' 

And in the following lines we have a scene at a Fair 
which we may very well believe to be Lady Fair. They 
tell us 

How pedlars' stalls with glittering toys are laid 

The various fairings of the country maid. 

Long silken laces hang upon the twine, 

And rows of pins and amber bracelets shine ; 

How the neat lass knives, combs, and scissors spies, 

And looks on thimbles with desiring eyes. 

Of lotteries next with tuneful note he told, 

Where silver spoons are won, and rings of gold. 

The lads and lasses trudge the street along, 

And all the fair is crowded in his song. 

The mountebank now treads the stage, and sells 

His pills, his balsams, and his ague-spells ; 

Now o'er and o'er the nimble tumbler springs, 

And on the rope the venturous maiden swings ; 

Jack Pudding, in his party-coloured jacket. 

Tosses the glove, and jokes at every packet. 

Of raree-shows he sung, and Punch's feats, 

Of pockets picked in crowds, and various cheats. 

The introduction of the theatre with dramas played by 
the King's servants should have raised the character of the 
Fair. Perhaps it did. In any case, the Theatre of the Fair 
was not an unpromising place for a young actor to begin. 
The audience wanted nothing but the presentation of a story, 
and that a strong and moving story. If an actor failed in the 
fire and passion of his part, he \/as pelted off the stage. He 
was therefore compelled to pay attention to the very essentials 
of his profession, the presentation visibly and unmistakably of 
the emotions. A stagey manner would be the result of too 
long continuance on these boards, but at the outset no kind of 



i86 SOUTH LONDON 

practice could be more useful. This was proved by the lovely 
Mrs. Horton, who was discovered by the manager of Drury 
Lane playing at the Lady Fair in the play of ' Cupid and 
Psyche.' He took her away and placed her on his own stage, 
where she played for many years, leaving behind her a repu- 
tation of the finest actress and the most beautiful woman 
known up to that time. 

The Theatre of the Fair is, I think, quite gone. I rejoice 
in being able to remember one of these delightful shows. 
There was a great booth with a platform in front and canvas 
pictures hung up behind the platform. The orchestra occupied 
one end of the platform, playing with zeal between the per- 
formances. The company in their lovely dresses stood on the 
platform and danced a kind of quadrille from time to time : 
the clown and the pantaloon, when they were not tumbling, 
stood at the head of the broad stairs clanging cymbals and 
bawling that the play was just about to begin. The price of 
a seat was threepence, with a few rows at sixpence : the play 
lasted twenty minutes : it was always a melodrama of per- 
secuted and virginal innocence —in white. The joy of the 
whole performance was to children beyond all power of words : 
the play : the music : the ethereal beauty of the actresses : the 
rollicking fun of the clown : the sense of fleeting pleasure con- 
veyed by the roughness of the benches and the grass under 
our feet : and the general festivity of the noise, the music, the 
bawling outside make me remember Richardson'.s Theatre 
and Messrs. Doggett's and Penkethman's, with the greatest 
pleasure and the most poignant regret. 

I fear, then, that Lady Fair becarne, in the evening especi- 
ally, a place in which everybody went ^ as he pleased/ and that 
with so much dancing, drinking, love-making, singing, play- 
ing on the flowery slope that the authorities had to interfere. 
It is, indeed, a most melancholy circumstance that the people 
cannot be allowed to amuse themselves in the way they 
would choose. May Fair first, Lady Fair next, one after the 



i88 SOUTH LONDON 

other the Fairs of London have been suppressed. Lady Fair 
succumbed in 1760, when it was finally abolished. 

May one say a word of two other fairs even more disre- 
putable — those of Charlton and of Greenwich ? Charlton Fair 
was founded in the year 1268, so that it was a very ancient 
institution, to be held on three days in the year — * the Eve, the 
day, and the morrow of the Trinity.' The time of the Fair 
was, however, changed at some time to the day of St. Luke, 
on October 18. It was one of those Fairs which acquired a 
distinctive character. Just as Barnet Fair became a Horse 
Fair, Charlton became a Horn Fair. The obvious— and there- 
fore popular — kind of fooling to be made out of horns and 
their associations — which are now quite lost and forgotten — as 
well as the day, which was also connected with those associa- 
tions — made this Fair extremely popular. The people from 
London went down to Deptford by boat, joined the people 
from Greenwich and Deptford, and formed a burlesque pro- 
cession, everyone wearing horns on his head, or carrying 
horns to affix to some other person's head. At the fair itself 
there was exhibited a great quantity of vessels and utensils 
made of horn : every booth had horns put up in the front : 
rams' horns were exhibited and sold in quantities ; even the 
gingerbread was stamped with horns. The reason of this 
display was one quite forgotten by the people : viz. that a 
horned ox is the recognised symbol of St. Luke. It was 
customary for men to dress up, for the burlesque procession, 
in women's clothes ; they also amused themselves (see 
Chambers's ' Book of Days ') in lashing the women with 
furze : probably in pretence only. The procession was dis- 
continued in 1768, the Fair went on until 1871. 

We must not forget Greenwich Fair, which was held on 
Whit Monday. Long after Bartholomew Fair decayed and 
fell, Greenwich Fair remained. It was one of the greatest 
holidays of the year for the London folk of the lower class. 
The amusements consisted of two parts, the first playing in 



THE LADY FAIR 189 

the Park, where there were races and sports : the second the 
fun of the booths and the shows. 

The former began early in the forenoon and went on 
until the evening. The people came down from London in 
boats for the most part, and by the Old Kent Road in 
vehicles of every description, or even on foot for the whole 
five miles. If it was a fine morning the park was filled 
with the working classes and the young men and maidens 
belonging to the working classes. The sports were primitive : 
the favourite amusement was for a line of youths and girls to 
run down hill hand, in hand. The slope was steep, the pace 
was rapid : before long half of them were sprawling headlong 
or rolling over and over, with such displays and derangements 
as may be imagined. Or there were games of kiss in the 
ring and thread-my-needle : or there were sailors showing 
the Cockneys how to dance the hornpipe ; men with tele- 
scopes through which could be seen the men hanging in 
chains on the Isle of Dogs, or St. Paul's Cathedral : or there 
were the old pensioners telling yarns of the battles they had 
fought, especially the Battle of Trafalgar, when to every 
man, as it seemed, Fortune had caused the hero Nelson to fall 
into his arms. Outside the Park the street was filled with 
booths where everything could be bought, as at Lady Fair, 
which was worthless, including gingerbread. There were 
theatrical booths, shows qf pictures, pantomimes. Punch and 
Judy, exhibitions of monsters, dwarfs, giants, bearded ladies, 
mermaids, menageries of wild beasts, feats of legerdemain, 
fire-eaters, boxers and quarterstaff players, cock fighting, 
and every other conceivable amusement. In the evening, 
beside the Theatre, there were the dancing booths. The 
same cause which led to the suppression of the Lady Fair 
brought about that of Greenwich Fair. It was suppressed, 
I think, about the year 1855. I myself saw it in 185 1, but 
only in the afternoon, when it was already, I remember, a 
good-natured crowd playing horse tricks upon each other, 



I90 SOUTH LONDON 

and making a noise, which, with the bellowing- of the show 
folk, the blaring of the bands, the cries of the boys and girls 
on the merry-go-rounds, and the roar of the crowd, one 
will never forget. For my own part I am of opinion that the 
noise was the worst part of the fair : that what went on in 
the evening would have gone on just as much outside the 
Fair as in it : and that it did very little harm to let the people 
enjoy themselves in their own way, which was a coarse, some- 
what drunken and somewhat indecent way. 



191 



CHAPTER X 

ST. MARY OVERIES 

London possesses two churches at least of surpassing beauty. 
One of them, in the North, is the Church of St. Bartholomew 
the Great ; the other, in the south, is the church of St. Mary 
Overy or Overies, now called St. Saviour's. This church, for 
some unknown reason, does not attract many English visitors. 
Americans go there in great numbers. It is so beautiful : it has 
so many historical associations : that I hope to interest more of 
oui own people, and, if it may be, to increase the attractions of 
the place to the Americans, by a few pages on its history. 
These pages are but a sketch, and that a slight sketch, of this 
history. I have already in another volume (' London,' p. 47) 
given the legend of the foundation of St. Mary Overies. Two 
Norman knights, Pont de I'Arche and d'Aunsey, early in the 
twelfth century, found here a small Religious House, called 
the House of Our Lady of the Canons, which had been created 
by Mary the daughter of one Awdry, ferryman. Mary herself 
was buried in the chapel of her own House, where is now the 
Lady Chapel of St. Saviour's. The name, St. Mary Overies, 
which ought to be restored to the Church, seems to mean, not 
St. Mary of the Ferry, or St. Mary over the River, but St. 
Mary ' Ofers,' or St. Mary of the Bank or Shore. These two 
knights founded a new and larger House on the site of Mary 
Awdry's modest foundation. For reasons now difficult to 
discover, if they matter to anybody, the monks of the Norman 
House fell into poverty. In the year 12 12, again, they had 
the additional misfortune to lose these buildings and their 
Church, which were in great part, if not altogether, destroyed 



192 



SOUTH LONDON 



by the great fire of that year. A hundred years later the 
monks submitted to Edward I. a pitiful statement that the 
whole of their possessions was insufficient so much as to provide 
the bare necessities of life without the gifts of the faithful : 
that their Church was lying in ruins, and had been in that 
condition for thirty years ; that they had been unable to 
rebuild any of it except the campanile ; and that they lived 
in constant terror of being inundated by the Thames. This 
shows that they had suffered the Embankment to fall into a 

neglected state. At the begin- 
ning of the fifteenth century, 
Cardinal Beaufort — Shake- 
speare's Cardinal Beaufort — 
contributed largely to the re- 
buildingof the Church. Another 
benefactor was Gower the poet, 
who spent in the Priory the 
last years of his life, died here, 
and was buried in the Church. 
The monument of John Gower 
stands in the north aisle of the 
newly built nave. The Religious 
of the House showed their 
gratitude to him by promising 
a Pardon of 1,500 days to any- 
one who would say a prayer for the soul of the poet 

The position of the Priory, close to the Palace of the 
Bishop of Winchester, led to the Church becoming the scene 
of many important historical events. Just as Blackfriars was 
used for political Functions ; just as Wyclyf was tried in St. 
Paul's Cathedral, so St. Mary Overies was used on occasions 
when the Bishop of Winchester had to do with the matter in 
hand. Thus, two great marriages were solemnised in this 
Church. One was that of Edmund Holland, Earl of Kent, in 
1406, with Lucia, daughter of the Lord of Milan. The bride 




A SEAL OF ST. MARY OVERIES 



ST. MARY OVERIES 



193 



was given away by Henry IV., and her dowry was 100,000 
ducats. At her death she left the canons 6,000 crowns for 
the good of her soul and that of her husband. The other 
marriage was one of far greater importance. It was that of 




SEALS OF ST. MARY OVERIES 

James the First, King of Scotland, the most pleasing figure 
in Scottish history, a poet and a scholar, of whom Drummond 
of Hawthornden wrote that ' of former Kings it might be said 
that the nation made the Kings, but of this King, that he made 
the people a nation.' He married in 1424, being then thirty 

O 



194 SOUTH LONDON 

years of age, after a captivity of nineteen years, Joan, or 
Johanna, daughter of the Earl of Somerset, and niece of 
Cardinal Beaufort. She was a cousin, therefore, of King 
Henry IV. The royal pair rode forth to Scotland laden with 
such gifts of plate and cloth of gold as Scotland had never 
before seen. They were accompanied by the Cardinal and 
his brother, the Duke of Exeter. Twelve years later, the 




NORTH-EAST VIEW OF ST. SAVIOUR'S, SOUTHWARK, 180O 

King was murdered in the presence of his wife, who was 
wounded in trying to save him, a sad ending to a marriage of 
love, and a tragic widowhood to the woman whom her poet 

^ ^^ ^ The fairest and the freshest younge flower 

That e'er I saw, methought, before that hour. 

In 1 539 the House was suppressed, the canons were put 



ST. MARY OVERIES 195 

out, and the place was given to Sir Anthony Brown, whose 
son became Viscount Montague and gave his new name to the 
ancient close of the Monastery. In the following year the 
Church was made a Parish Church, including the church of Mary 




CRYPT OF ST. MARY OVERIES 

Magdalene, which stood beside the Priory Church, as St. Peter- 
le-Poor stood beside St. Austin, St. Gregory beside St. Paul's, 
and St. Margaret beside Westminster Abbey Chur:h together 
with the Parish Church of St. Margaret in the High Street. The 
nave gradually became ruinous and was taken down in 1838, 

o 2 



196 SOUTH LONDON 

when a new nave, the memory of which makes the whole 
Borough shudder when it is mentioned, was put up. Its 
floor was raised above that of the transepts, and it was treated 
as a separate building, divided from the transepts by a brick 
wall. This terrible building has now been taken down and a 
nave rebuilt after the pattern of the original structure of the 
fourteenth century. Thus reconstructed, the church will soon, 
it is hoped, become the Cathedral Church of the Diocese of 
Southwark. At present it has not the Cathedral organisa- 
tion- being without a Dean, or Canons, or a Chapter. The 
Church can boast of more monuments and of a more dis- 
tinguished company of the dead than can be found in most 
London churches. Here are buried, probably, Mary herself, 
the original founder, if she is not a legendary person : 
Pont de I'Arche and d'Auncey, the founders : a long 
line of unknown and forgotten Priors and Canons of the 
Augustinian House : John Gower, on whose monument can 
still be read the prayers he wrote for his own soul : 

En toy qui es Filz de Dieu le Pere 
Sauve soit qui gist sous cest pierre. 

The monument was repaired and painted in 1832 by the 
first Duke of Sutherland. Lancelot Andrewes, Bishop of 
Winchester, is buried in the Lady Chapel, where his monu- 
ment can be seen in black and white marble ; Dyer the poet, 
who died 1607; Edmund Shakespeare, 'player,' poet and 
writer, buried somewhere in the Church, 1607 ; Laurence 
Fletcher, one of the shareholders in the Globe, also buried in 
the Church, 1608 ; Philip Henslow, the manager, buried in the 
chancel, 1616 ; John Fletcher, buried in the Church, 1625 ; 
Philip Massinger, a ' stranger, i.e. belonging to some other 
parish, buried in the Church, 1639. There are three stones 
in the chancel, inscribed with the names of John Fletcher, 
Edmund Shakespeare, and Philip Massinger, bu^; merely to 
record that they are buried somewhere in the Church. 



ST. MARY OVERIES 



197 



Other monuments and tombs there are : one a figure, 
commonly found in mediaeval churches, of a body wasted by 
death : a wooden effigy of a knight : a monument to a quack 
of Charles the Second's time, and monuments to certain 




GATEWAY OF ST. MARY's PRIORY, SOUTHWARK, 181I 
{From a Drawing by Whichelo) 

persons now forgotten ; on one some lines in imitation of 

Herrick : 

Like to the damask rose you see 

Or like the blossom on the tree. 

Or like the dainty flower of May, 

Or like the morning of the day, 

Or like the sun, or like the shade. 

Or like the gourd which Jonas had. 
Even so is Man ; Man's thread is spun, 
Drawn out, and cut, and so is done. 



198 SOUTH LONDON 

The rose withers, the blossom blasteth, 
The flower fades, the morning hasteth. 
The sun sets, the shadow flies, 
The gourd consumes, and Man he dies. 

The Ladye Chapel, one of the few beautiful things 
surviving of mediaeval London, was very nearly destroyed by 
the ignorant Vandalism of about the year 1 835. It was neces- 
sary in rebuilding London Bridge a few feet west of the old 
Bridge to prepare new approaches on the south as well as on 
the north. What follows is told by Knight : 

' The Committee agreed to grant a space of sixty feet for 
the better display of St. Mary Overies, on the condition that 
the Lady Chapel was swept away. The matter appeared in 
a fair way for being thus settled, when Mr. Taylor sounded 
the alarm in one of the daily papers. Thomas Saunders, 
Esq., and Messrs. Cottinggam and Savage, the architects, 
actively interfered. A large majority of the parishioners, 
however, decided to accept the proposals of the Committee. 
In the meantime, the gentlemen we have named were 
indefatigable in their exertions ; and they were effectively 
seconded by the press. At a subsequent meeting there was 
a majority of three only for pulling down the chapel ; and 
on a poll being demanded and obtained, there ultimately 
appeared the large majority of 240 for its preservation. The 
excitement of the hour was prudently used to obtain funds to 
restore it, which has been most successfully accomplished.' 

I have mentioned Winchester House, the Palace of the 
Bishop, as being close to the Priory. On any map may 
be traced the extent of the Palace. On the north is Clink 
Street, the Clink Prison being at the west end of the street ; 
on the west is now Park Street formerly Deadman's Place ; 
on the south is a continuation of Park Street ; and on the 
east is a street running south from St. Mary Overies Church. 
Winchester House, which thus covered a large piece of 
ground, was, with its grounds, enclosed by a wall. Many of 



ST. MARY OVERIES 199 

the buildings, especially the great gate, remained standing 
almost within the memory of man. The state and ceremony 
of a Bishop demanded a large retinue, and the Bishop's house 
must therefore be provided with a sufficient numberof rooms for 
their accommodation. The map must not be accepted as 
laying down the exact site, the distances or the scale, or the 
arrangement of the courts and buildings. 

We have now to speak, but briefly, of the Marian Persecu- 
tions and of the Martyrs. With these the Church of St. Mary 
and Winchester House had a good deal to do. 




REMAINS OF THE OLD PRIORY, ST. MARY OVERIES 

On Monday, January 28, 1555, was seen the first of many 
melancholy sights. On that day Gardiner, Bishop of Win- 
chester, presided at a Court held in St. Mary Overies Church 
for the trial of heretics. The court was actually held in the 
Ladye Chapel. Hither were brought Bishop Hooper and 
John Rogers : they were heard : they argued their case : they 
were found obstinate : they were committed to the Clink 
Prison hard by : on the next day, with Bradford, Dr. Crome, 
Dr. Saunders, Dr. Ferrar, Dr. Taylor, and several others, 
they were sentenced to be burned. Bradford wrote to 



200 SOUTH LONDON 

Cranmer after the trial : ' This day, I think, or to-morrow 
at the uttermost, hearty Hooper, sincere Saunders, and trusty 
Taylor, end their course and receive their crowne The 
next am I, which hourly looke for the Porter to open me the 
gates after them, to enter into the desired rest.' 

So began those fires from which the cause of Roman 
Catholicism long suffered, and is even now still suffering. For 
the popular judgment does not discern and separate. The 
burnings under Henry and Edward are lumped together 
in the mind of the people, and all set down to Mary. The 
names, places, and times of the martyrs and their martyrdoms 
as given by Machyn, not by Fox, show that if the Queen's 
advisers had deliberately done their best to make their form 
of Faith odious and hateful, they could not have devised a 
better plan than the burning of the people for religion's sake. 
It is generally thought and believed that the indignation of 
the people was aroused by seeing the Bishops and preachers 
burned. That I do not believe. The executions of great men 
do not affect the populace ; they witness the passage of a 
Thomas More on his way to the block : or of a Cromwell : 
with equal indifference : these statesmen do not belong to the 
life of the people. In the Marian persecution they heard that 
Archbishop Cranmer had been burned at Oxford, but they 
offered little outward show of emotion : they heard that Ridley 
and Latimer had been burned : their constancy, no doubt, 
touched the crowd : but still, these martyrs were not of them- 
selves. When, however, they found that not only Bishops and 
great people, but also their own brothers, cousins, fathers, were 
taken out from their workshops and tied three or four together 
to the stake, where they suffered the agonies of the fire and 
still continued to pray aloud with firmness : then the lesson 
went straight home to them ; and for many a generation to 
come the people learned to loathe the very name of the reli- 
gion which could thus burn innocent people by the hundred 
for believing, as they were told, what the Bible taught. 



ST. MARY OVERIES 



20 1 



It is a mistake, again, to suppose that the lessons of perse- 
cution were taught at Smithfield alone. They were indus- 
triously taught from many centres. There were burnings at 
Stratford-le-Bow : at Stepney : at Westminster : beyond St. 
George's, Scuthwark, at Newington ; while the vast crowds 
which attended a burning and imbibed these lessons of fear and 
hatred are shown by two entries alone in Machyn's Diary, 




TOMB OF BISHOP ANDREWS, ST. MARY OVERIES 

1556. 'The xxvij day of June rod from Newgate unto Strat- 
ford-a-bow, in iii cares xiij, xj men and ij women, and there 
bornyd (burned) to iiij postes, and there where a xx M pepulL' 
And again, 1556. ' The xxij day of January whent in to 
Smythfield to berne between vii and viij in the morning v 
men and ij women : on of the men was a gentyllman of the 
endor tempull, ys nam Master Gren ; and they were all bornyd 
by ix at iij postes. And ther wher a commonment throughe 



202 SOUTH LONDON 

London over nyght that no young folke shuld come ther, for 
ther the grettest number was as has byne sene at swyche a 
tyme.' 

Therefore it is evident, first, that enormous crowds 
gathered together to witness the sufferings of the victims, 
and to note their constancy in the hour of agony ; secondly, 
that the authorities were becoming alarmed at the effect 
which these examples might have upon the young. No 
young people were permitted to be present. We may be 
sure that the prohibition was openly defied. 

As for Gardiner, he died soon after the martyr fires 
began, stricken, said his enemies, by the hand of God in 
punishment for his cruelties. His physicians, 1 believe, 
called it gout in the stomach, a reading which one prefers, 
because Gardiner was no worse than the rest of them, and 
after his death there was no abatement, but rather an increase, 
in the burnings. He had, however, a very fine funeral, which 
began at the church of St. Mary Overies, and was continued 
all the way to Winchester, where the place of his burial 
and his Chantry Chapel may still be seen. 

Of this function, Machyn gives a short account, but it 
shall suffice. It must be remembered that Gardiner was not 
only a very great person, but that he was also believed to be 
the natural son of Bishop Woodville, and, if the belief was 
well founded, he was therefore a cousin of the Queen. But 
this may be scandal. Machyn, the chronicler of funerals, thus 
describes Gardiner's funeral. 

* The xxiiij day of Feybruary was the obsequies of the 
most reverentt father in God, Sthevyn Gardener, docthur and 
bysshope of Wynchastur, prelett of the gartter, and latte 
chansseler of England, and on of the preve consell unto 
Kyng Henry the viij and unto quen Mare, tyll he ded ; and 
so the after-none bc-gane the knyll at sant Mare Overes with 
ryngyng, and after be-gane the durge ; with a palle of cloth 
of gold, and with ij whytt branchys, and ij dosen of stayffe- 



ST. MARY OVERIES 



203 



torchys bornyng, and iiij grett tapurs ; and my lord 
Montygu V the cheyffe mornar, and my lord bysshope of 
Lynkolne and ser Robart Rochaster, comtroUer, and with 
dyvers odur in blake, and mony blake gownes and cotes ; and 
the morow masse of requeem and offeryng done, be-gane the 







A CORNER IN ST. SAVIOUR'S, SOUTHWARK 



sarmon ■, and so masse done, and so to dener to my lord 
Montyguw ('s) ; and at ys gatt the corse was putt m-to a 
wagon with iiij welles all covered with blake, and ower the 
corsse ys pyctur mad with ys myter on ys hed, with ys 
armes, and v gentyll men hayryng ys v banars in gownes 



204 



SOUTH LONDON 



and hods, then ij harolds in ther cote armur, master 
Garter and Ruge-crosse ; then cam the men rydyng, care- 
hyng of torchys a Ix bornyng, at bowt the corsse all the 
way ; and then cam the mornars in govvnes and cotes, to the 
nombur unto ij C. a-for and be-hynd, and so at sant Gorges 
cam prestes and clarkes with crosse and sensyng, and ther 
thay had a grett torche gyffyn them, and so to ever parryche 




ST. SAVIOUR'S, SOUTHWARK, T79O 

tyll they cam to Wynchaster, and had money as many as 
cam to mett them, and durge and masse at evere logyng.' 

The Church, when the Priory was dissolved, stood on the 
south side of the monastic buildings : the Cloister occupied 
that part of the ground on the north of the nave : the re- 
fectory, chapter house and dormitories, and other buildings 
stood about the Cloister : an embankment kept off the 
Thames at high tide: on the west side was St. Mary 



ST. MARY OVERIES 205 

Overies Dock, which was also the south end of the ferry. 
The dock is there still, but where the wall of the Monastery- 
stood, round the Garden, and one could see the orchards 
beyond, are now huge warehouses. Some remains of the 
Cloister stood until recently, and one gateway of the precinct 
— there was certainly another on the side of the High Street 
— stood close to the west front of the Church. The Cloister 
received the name of Montagu Close, after the son of Sir 
Thomas Brown who became Viscount Montagu. If you 
pass round to the north of the Church you will now find a 
few fragments piled up, the indication of an ancient door in 
the wall of the Church ; but all traces of the monastic 
buildings are entirely swept away. 

The ground in front of the Church is also changed. In 
post-Reformation times there was a school here — St. Saviour's 
school ; there were also almshouses ; there was a peaceful 
quiet kind of close, in which was heard the buzz of the boys 
in school ; one saw the bedesmen creeping along in the sun ; 
one watched the crumbling ruins falling fast into decay : one 
wondered where in the narrow churchyard or in the Church 
lay the bones of Massinger and Fletcher : one seemed to see 
Bishop Hooper and John Rogers stepping forth into the 
sunlight, their trial over, their sentence passed : their cheeks, 
perhaps, somewhat flushed, their eyes somewhat brightened, 
because, even with such a faith as theirs, all a man's courage 
must be wanted to face the agony of the flames, through 
which for half an hour they would have to wade, as Christian 
waded through the river, before they reached the shore 
beyond. 



2o6 SOUTH LONDON 



CHAPTER XI 

THE SHOW FOLK 

SOUTHWARK was a city of a various population. It had 
srreat Houses for nobles and for Ecclesiastics : it had fair inns 
for the reception of merchants, coming up from Kent and 
the south country : it had a riverside people of fishermen and 
watermen living up stream on the Lambeth bank or down 
stream at Bermondsey or Rotherhithe : it had a great number 
of residents who worked in the orchards and the gardens 
which spread over the whole of the rich low-lying land now 
embanked, secure from floods and the highest tides. It 
contained, besides, a large number of rogues and vagabonds, 
fugitives from justice, lying here in so-called sanctuary, where 
the officers of the law did not dare to present themselves. 
In spite of the powers granted to the City over Southwark, 
the place remained a receptacle and a refuge ' down to the 
end of the last century, when the so-called Liberties of the 
Mint ' — the last place of sanctuary — were finally abolished and 
only a slum remained to mark the site of a sanctuary. 

Beside all these people Southwark contained the Show 
Folk of Bankside. When the Show Folk began to live in 
Bankside I know not : their settlement originally was in 
Westminster outside the King's Palace, where there was 
always a great demand for music, dancing, tumbling, mum- 
ming and such recreative performances ; they were also, 
however, in great request in London by City Church, city 
company, and city tavern. Now there was no place for them 
within the walls : they had no company : there was neither a 
Musicians' ; nor a Dancers' ; nor a Singers' ; nor a Mummers' ; 



THE SHOW FOLK 207 

nor a Tumblers' Company. There was no company which 
would admit them ; there was no ward where they could get 




WINCHESTER PALACE 



a street for themselves : they were gently but firmly pushed 
out. And not only were they a class apart but they were a 
class in contempt. It was always held contemptible to 



2o8 SOUTH LONDON 

provide amusement. No one, as yet, had made of music or 
of acting a fine art; no gentleman, as yet, and for a long 
time after, would take part in the buffoonery which the actor 
had then to exhibit : an atmosphere of disrepute attached 
to the calling, to those who followed the calling, and to the 
place where they lived : in the City, Aldermen had a way of 
connecting nocturnal disorders with these children of melody : 
where they resorted the taverns would carry on their revelries 
after curfew, even to midnight : if the street was alarmed by 
nocturnal ramblers it would prove to be after an evening with 
the dancers and the tumblers : the Church, especially the 
Church Puritanic, set her face against those who devised 
entertainments, on the ground that the devisers were an un- 
godly and dissolute crew. Therefore they crossed the river. 
On Bankside, in the Liberty of the Clink, where the City 
could not interfere, they ' went as they pleased.' They were 
dissolute, if they chose — Heaven knows whether they did 
choose — without reproach : their taverns kept open house as 
long as they would stop to drink there was singing every 
day without interference : there was merriment without the 
rebuke of the sour face : there was no fear of being haled 
before the Lord Mayor, for making people laugh : there was 
no terror of pillory, and no man on their side of the river 
was ' put in stocks o' Monday, for kissing of his wife o' 
Sunday.' It was the Bishop of Winchester's Liberty, but he 
was content, on the whole, to leave the residents unmolested 
and in the possession of their guitars, their fiddles, their 
songs and their plays. 

When the Shew Folk were wanted in the City it was easy 
for them to go across : they were ready at a moment's notice 
to arrange a pageant, or to take part in one : they could 
provide the beauteous maidens in white with long fair tresses 
who stood on platforms in Chepe and scattered gold rose 
nobles made of paste on the heads of the crowd : they found 
hermits, and constructed caves for those godly men in the 



THE SHOW FOLK 



509 



midst of Gracious Street : they found the music for the 
dragging of the traitor on a hurdle : for the march of the 
rogue to the pillory : for the riding of the Lord Mayor : for 
the procession of the Company on its feast day. For a miracle 
play they presented the parish church with the Fall of Man : 




THE GLOBE THEATRE 
{From the Grace Collection) 

the Raising of Lazarus : the Pilgrims of Emmaus : David and 
Goliath : or any other episode from the Bible— how many 
excellent players there were among them whose names have 
long since been forgotten ! They knew how to present a 
Masque— not, perhaps, with the same splendour as one by 

P 



2IO SOUTH LONDON 

Ben Jonson and Inigo Jones — who commanded the King's 
purse — but a neat and creditable affair, with dresses appro- 
priate, full of surprises, and furnished with mythological 
characters, for the Hall 'of a City Company on the day of the 
Annual Feast! For "young gentlemen of the more debauched 
kind they had another kind of entertainment, with singing, 
dancing girls, tumbling and posturing; with rare jests— pity 
they were not rarer — and excellent fooling by their clowns. 
The modern art of acting did not begin at the Globe 
Theatre : there has never been any time when the actor was 
unknown : the only difference is that he was not formerly 
allowed to be anything but a buffoon : that he had little but 
buffoonery in his repertoire : and now he is an artist and 
scorns the tricks of the buffoon. Nor is the art of entertain- 
ment of modern invention. The Company of Parish Clerks, 
for instance, were great promoters of sacred plays. Their 
poets — whose names are entirely lost— provided the words and 
arranged the scenes ; the members of the company played 
the parts : the Show Folk ' mounted ' the piece : they provided 
the monsters ; the red flames for the mouth of Hell ; the troops 
of angels or of devils, the stage business and the music. 
Many of the Parish Churches had their annual play on their 
Saint's Day. Thus the Parish Church of St. Margaret, which 
was taken down when St. Mary Overies' became St. Saviour's, 
had its play on St. Margaret's Day (July 20), and often 
another on the Day of St. Lucy (December 13) as well. 
We have already observed that the Londoner of old 
never made any difference in the matter of Play or Pageant 
whether the time was summer or winter. He was like the 
Scythian, face all over : he felt no cold : he held his Riding, or his 
Coronation Procession, quite as readily in December as in July. 
Another kind of Show Folk, but rougher and more brutal, 
were the people who looked after the bears and the dogs. 
Bull baiting, bear baiting, sometimes horse baiting, together 
with badger bc^iting, duek hunting, cock throwing, dog 



THE SHOW FOLK 211 

fighting and cock fighting, were the chosen and common 
sports of the people. Baiting of every kind there was 
wherever there were dogs and bulls and badgers, but the 
centre and headquarters of the sport was South London, in 
the place called Paris Gardens. The popularity of the sport 
is shown by the simple facts that there was not only bull and 
bear baiting in Paris Gardens, but also two rings or amphi- 
theatres for bull and bear baiting outside the gardens behind 
Bankside, and that in the High Street itself, nearly opposite 
St. George's Church, there was permanently established the 
bull ring to which an animal could be tied whenever one was 
found fit for the purpose of affording an hour's sport by the 
madness of his rage or the agonies of his death. 

The present Blackfriars Bridge Road cuts through the 
site of Paris Gardens, leaving a portion on either side. They 
extended to the distance of about a quarter of a mile south 
of the river : sluggish streams and ditches ran across and 
round the gardens, which were so thickly planted with trees as 
to be dark in the summer. Both in summer and winter the 
place was noisome with exhalations from the marshy soil. 
These gardens were the chief home of the rough and cruel 
sports already mentioned : here were kept under the King's 
bearward the King's dogs ; the Mayor's dogs ; and the 
bears whom they baited. It does not appear that bulls were 
also kept here : for baiting purposes it was generally a young 
bull that was chosen, and he was baited to death. The bears 
were not killed, they were all known to the people by name, 
such as Harry Hunks and Sackerson, and were valued in 
proportion to the sport they afforded. The dogs, who with 
the bears were fed upon the offal and refuse brought 
over every day from the Shambles of Newgate, were in- 
credibly fierce and savage. In these days we hardly know 
what a savage dog is, even the bull dog has become peaceful : 
formerly, the best defender of the house was the dog who 
was unloosed at night : they fed him chiefly on meat : he was 

p 2 



212 SOUTH LONDON 

trained to fly at the throat of a stranger : he was a terror to 
wayfarers -remember the dog in the second part of the 
^ Pilgrim's Progress : ' he was always biting and rending 
some one : he had the ferocity of the wolf redeemed only by 
affection for his master : we have no such dogs in these 
days. Accompanied by one or two such fierce mastiffs or bull 
dogs who feared no one but their master, a man might 
journey from end to end of the country armed with nothing 
but a club. Such a dog would fight and would overcome a 
man. Kept in the kennels, with insufficient exercise, with 
stimulating food, the creatures became fiercer than wolves and 
stronger than tigers. The bull they loved to bait : he had 
horns and hoofs to dodge : but the bear afforded the best 
sport both for man and dog : he presented a nose and ears 
and a thick fur on which to spring, and to fasten the canine 
teeth upon. What joy to hang on to those ears, torn and 
bleeding, the whole dog quivering with rapture even though 
in the end one stroke of the bear's hind paw dragged out the 
inside of the dog, with the heart and the breath of life ! 

It was a Royal sport, a sport offered to ambassadors. In 
a contemporary Diary it is related that the French Ambassa- 
dors, on May 25, 1 559, were entertained at Court with a dinner, 
and after dinner with a bull and bear baiting, the Queen herself 
looking on from a gallery : the next day they were taken down 
the river to see the bull and bear baiting at Paris Gardens. Forty 
years later James the First entertained the Spanish Ambassador 
after dinner with the bears fighting with greyhounds and with 
a bull baiting. About the same time the Duke of Wirtemberg 
paid a visit to London and saw the baiting at Paris Gardens : 

*On the 1st of September his Highness was shown in 
London the English dogs, of which there were about 1 20, all 
kept in the same enclosure, but each in a separate kennel. 

* In order to gratify his Highness, and at his desire, two 
bears and a bull were baited ; at such times you can 
perceive the breed and mettle of the dogs, for although they 



THE SHOW FOLK 



213 



receive serious injuries from the bears, are caught by the 
horns of the bull, and tossed into the air so as frequently to 
fall down again upon the horns, they do not give in, [but 
fasten on the bull so firmly] that one is obliged to pull them 
back by the tails, and force open their jaws. Four dogs at 
once were set on the bull ; they, however, could not gain any 
advantage over him, for he so artfully contrived to ward off 
their attacks that they could not well get at him ; on the 
contrary, the bull served them very scurvily by striking and 
butting at them.' 




BEAR GARDEN 



And another contemporary account of a bear baiting is 
furnished by Hentzner in i 598 : 

' There is still another place, built in the form of a 
Theatre, which serves for the baiting of bears and bulls : they 
are fastened behind, and then worried by those great English 
dogs {quos lingua vernaculd " Docken " appellant), and mastiffs, 
but not without great risks to the dogs from the teeth of the 
one and the horns of the other, and it sometimes happens 
they are killed on the spot : fresh ones are immediately 



214 SOUTH LONDON 

supplied in the places of those that are wounded or tired. 
To this entertainment there often follows that of whipping a 
blinded bear, which is performed by five or six men, standing 
in a circle with whips, which they exercise upon him without 
any mercy ; although he cannot escape from them because of 
his chain, he nevertheless defends himself vigorously, throwing 
down all who come within his reach and are not active 
enough to get out of it, tearing the whips out of their hands 
and breaking them. At these spectacles, and everywhere 
else, the English are constantly smoking the Nicotian weed, 
which in America is called Tobaca — others call it Poetum — 
[i.e. Petun, the Brazilian name for Tobacco, from which the 
allied beautiful plant * Petunia ' derives its appellation,] and 
generally in this manner : they have pipes on purpose made 
of clay, into the farther, end of which they put the herb, so 
dry that it may be rubbed into powder, and lighting it, they 
draw the smoke into their mouths, which they puff out again 
through their nostrils like funnels, along with it plenty of 
phlegm and defluxion from the head. In these Theatres, 
fruits, such as apples, pears and nuts, according to the season, 
are carried about to be sold, as well as wine and ale.' 

Bear baiting was so popular that fellows roamed about 
the country leading a bear wliich they offered to be baited 
for so much an hour at the inns which they passed. The 
master of the ' King's Game ' had power to seize upon any 
mastiff dogs, bears, or bulls for the King's service and to bait 
in any place within his dominions. Henslow and Alleyn, 
both actors, were also masters of the King's Game : they had 
licence to apprehend all vagrants travelling with bears and 
bulls. 

There was another place where the refining influence of 
the bear baiting might be enjoyed. Its site is still preserved 
in the lane called Bear Garden Alley. In Agas's map of 
1 560 an amphitheatre is shown called the ' Bear Baiting : ' a 
little to the west another amphitheatre is seen called the ' Bull 



THE SHOW FOLK 215 

Baiting.' Whether these places were the only buildings erected 
for this amusement or whether they were put up in addition 
to the place in Paris Gardens is a point for the antiquary. 
It is learnedly discussed by Mr. Ordish (' Early London 
Theatres'). The Spanish Ambassador in 1544 describes a 
bear baiting — but he does not say exactly where he saw it. 
' On the other side of the town ' is vague. I think, however, 
that he must mean Paris Gardens : 

* On the other side of the town we have seen seven bears, 
some of them very large ; they are driven into a circus, where 
they are confined by a long rope, while large and courageous 
dogs are let loose upon them as if to be devoured, and a fight 
takes place. It is not bad sport to witness the conflict. The 
large bears contend with three or four dogs, and sometimes 
one is victorious and sometimes the other ; the bears are 
ferocious and of great strength, and not only defend them-» 
selves with their teeth, but hug the dogs so closely with their 
forelegs, that, if they were not rescued by their masters, they 
would be suffocated. At the same place a pony is baited, 
with a monkey on its back, defending itself against the dogs 
by kicking them ; and the shrieks of the monkey, when he 
sees the dogs hanging from the ears and neck of the pony, 
render the scene very laughable.' 

In the year 1550 Crowley, the author of certain 
* Epigrams ' against abuses, mentions Paris Gardens (see 
Stow and Strype, 1758, vol. ii. p. 8). 

Every Sunday they will spend 
One penny or two, the bearward's living to mend. 
At Paris Gardens each Sunday, a man shall not fail 
To find two or three hundred for the bearward's vale. 

Later on there was certainly an amphitheatre in Paris 
Gardens, because an accident happened there. 

' The same 1 3th day of Januarie, being Sunday about foure 
of the clock in the afternoon, the old and under-propped 
scaffolds round about the Beare Garden, commonly called 



2i6 SOUTH LONDON 

Paris Garden, on the south side of the great river Thames 
over against the citie of London, over-deluged with people, 
fell suddenly downe, whereby to number of eight persons, 
men and women, were slaine and many others sore hurt and 
bruised to the shortening of their lives. A friendly warning 
to all that delight themselves in the cruelties of beastes than 
in the workes of mercy, the fruits of a true, professed faith, 
which ought to be the Sabbath dayes exercise.' (Stow's 
' Annals,* continued by Hawes.) 

The amphitheatre would hold a thousand people. 

The sport had other dangers : the bear, for instance, 
might get loose. Once the blind bear got loose : it was on 
December 9, 1554, and on the Bankside, probably at the 
amphitheatre outside Paris Gardens. He caught a serving 
man by the leg * and bytt a grate pesse away, and after by 
the hokyll bone, that within iii days after he ded ' (Machyn). 

Wherever such sports were carried on there must needs 
spring up a rabble rout who made their living by them : the 
bearward, the serving man who kept the kennels, fed the 
dogs, exercised the dogs, fed the bears, looked after the 
amphitheatre, took the money, and above all provided the 
drink. In the little lane now called the Bear Garden, there 
is a small square place which I take to be the survival of an 
open court in front of the circus. There is here a small 
tavern : the house itself is not ancient, but I believe that it 
stands on the site of the house which provided wine and beer 
for the spectators of the bear baiting. These sports, with 
others such as wrestling and fighting : these great crowds of 
people gathering together : the music which accompanied 
everything : caused the creation of taverns and drinking- 
places. Another attraction to the place may be only hinted 
at in these pages. Suffice it to say that all the profligate, 
all the debauched, all the rowdy, all the lovers of sport among 
the citizens of London crossed over to Bankside every 
evening in the summer and every Sunday in the winter, and 



THE SHOW FOLK 217 

there they frolicked, drank, sang, quarrelled, fought, and tor- 
tured animals to their hearts' content. 

It is pleasant to think of Bankside and the fields beyond 
it — the pleasure garden of London. It was easy to get into 
the open country on every side of the City walls, but there 
was no place so pleasant as the Lambeth Marsh and the Bank- 
side : none that offered so many and such various attractions. 
The flag flying over the Theatre proclaimed that a play was 
forward : the number of those who loved the play more than 
the baiting increased daily there was never a time when the 
citizens did not love the green fields and the woods : and these 
lay behind Paris Gardens and the Bank, beyond the barking 
of the dogs and the roar of the crowd and the blare of the 
music and the stink of the kennels. Every summer evening 
the river was crowded with the boats taking the people across 
to the stairs upon the Bank between St. Mary Overies and 
Old Barge House Stairs : innumerable were the boats. As 
for the watermen, John Taylor, the water poet, says that there 
were 40,000 of them plying between Windsor and Gravesend, 
while the number of people who were carried over every day 
to the plays on Bankside was three or four thousand. Forty 
thousand seems an enormous number, but we must remember 
that there were no docks : that ships were laden and unladen 
in mid stream by barges and boats : that the Thames was the 
highway between London and all riverside places ; between 
London and Westminster ; between London and Southwark, 
because even if one lived close to the bridge it was easier and 
quicker to be taken across by a boat than to walk over the 
bridge. The conveyance of three or four thousand people 
across the river every day would not want more than a 
thousand boats or two thousand watermen : at the same time 
the loss of their custom, which happened when the people 
went to Blackfriars instead of the Bank for their play, would 
be felt by the whole fraternity of watermen. 

We have arrived at the time when the bear baiting 



2i8 SOUTH LONDON 

attracted less than the play acting : when the amphitheatres 
were turned into theatres : and when Bankside became the re- 
sidence of the poets and the players. They came ; unfortunately 
the other people did not go away. There remained the tribe 
of them who made the music and found the dancers and the 
tumblers, the mummers and the conjurers : there remained 
the men — a rough and brutal lot — who looked aftei the bears 
and the dogs : the men who wielded quarterstafif and showed 
sword play, a swaggering and bullying company : there re- 
mained the young bloods who came over from their peaceful 
shops and warehouses to enjoy the sport and the conversation 
and talk of the place : there remained the ribald crew of men 
and women who naturally belong to such gatherings. There 
was another population at Westminster outside the King's 
House like unto this at Southwark : these, too, existed for the 
amusement of the King's courtiers and men-at-arms. The 
Southwark folk existed for the amusements of not the highest 
class of London City. The poets came, therefore, to this 
place in order to be near these theatres : they brought no 
improvement in example, in morals, or in manners : they 
lived among the people, and their lives were mostly as dis- 
orderly and their morals as loose as the company among 
whom they walked and talked. 

Southwark in the early sixteenth century, it may be 
noted, consisted of two parts, the one wholly distinct from 
the other. The first part was the High Street with its four 
churches of St. George's, St. Margaret's, St. Olave's, and St. 
Mary Overies : in the High Street were the two Debtors' 
Prisons : in the High Street was the ancient hospital : there 
also was the long succession of inns, stately, ample, frequented 
by merchants and capable of stabling an immense number of 
packhorses, and of receiving as many waggons as could fill 
the courtyard. The Palaces were mostly gone, turned into 
inns or tenements. The whole place was a great House of 



THE SHOW FOLK 219 

Call. It had no industries, it had no crafts : it had no civic 
or corporate existence. But it was respectable. 

The other part lay on the west of the High Street, 
stretching along the river nearly as far as Lambeth. This 
was the disreputable quarter, the place of amusement : the 
people who lived there, one and all, made the providing of 
amusement, pleasure and excitement their means of liveli- 
hood. It was like a never-ending fair where nothing was 
sold, and there were no booths except those of Ursula, with 
roast sucking pig, black puddings, custards, and ginger- 
bread. From every tavern all day long came the tinkling of 
the guitar and the trolling of some lusty voice and the silvery 
notes of a girl who sang like the wood pigeon because nature 
taught her. Here marched along the bear rolling his head from 
side to side, a monkey chattering on his back, the tabor and 
pipe going before him. After him came the dogs straining 
at the chain which held them, barking madly in anticipa- 
tion of the fight. Or it was a young bull who was led by 
two men to the ring where he would defend his life as long as 
the dogs allowed ; or it was the arrival at Falcon Stairs of 
boats by the dozen, each turning out its complement of 
citizens and their wives, who made for the theatre where the 
flag was flying. On the open bank were placed tables for those 
who drank : the balladmonger sang his songs and sold them 
afterwards : the posturer spread his carpet and went through 
his performance : the boys cried nuts and apples : the drawer 
ran about and filled his cans. In no other part of London 
was there a scene of greater animation and cheerfulness than 
on Bankside, on an afternoon or evening in the summer. 
And then to go home again across the broad and peaceful 
river at full tide, when the sun was set, and the river, like the 
sky, was aglow, and the people sang softly in the boats, and 
still from Bankside came the dying snatches of music, the 
soft breath of the cornet, and the tingling touch of the harp, 



220 SOUTH LONDON 

and the voices of those who sang, and the baying of the 
hounds from Paris Gardens. 

The early history of the playhouses on the Bank in- 
volves many questions, and may be safely left to the anti- 
quarian historian. The reader will find most of these 
questions raised and settled in a book, already quoted here, 
by Mr. T. Fairman Ordish (' Early London Theatres'). It 
appears, however, that there were players, if not playhouses, 
here as early as 1547. After the death of Henry VHI. 
Gardiner proposed to have a solemn dirge in memory of the 
King, but, he complained to the Council, the players of 
Southwark say that they also will have a ' solemn playe to 
trye who shall have most resorts, they in game, or I in 
earnest' 

Whether these players had a regular theatre, or whether 
they acted in the courtyard of an inn, or whether they had 
a moveable stage, I do not know. It is, however, quite certain 
that before the end of the sixteenth century there were four 
theatres in Bankside— the Rose, whose site was somewhere 
in Rose Alley : the Hope in Bear Garden Lane : the Swan in 
Paris Gardens — that is, on the west side of the Blackfriars 
Road, not far from the Bridge : and the Globe. The site of 
the Globe is generally allowed to have been at a spot 150 
feet south of Park Street, close to the Southwark Bridge 
Road, and on the east of it. For twenty years, more or 
less, the stream of playgoers was turned steadily and con- 
tinuously to the Theatres in Bankside, and poet and player 
lived beside the theatre, and the place was the pleasure 
resort of the people, and the haunt of sporting men, and the 
school of the citizens, in history at least : and the pride and 
glory of London for its dramatists, if the people knew : 
and the sink and shame of London for the iniquities and 
villanies practised there : the debauchery and the shameless- 
ness of those who lived upon the Bank. 

The Plague, not only of 1603 and of 1625, but those 



THE SHOW FOLK 



221 



milder attacks which threatened from time to time were a deadly 
enemy to the players, for then the theatre must be closed 
and the Bear Garden too, for in crowds there was infection. 
Think what it meant to close these places of resort. The 
Elizabethan theatres maintained almost as many persons as 
our own : there were the players proper — the Company : 
there were the servants ' in the front ' and the servants 
behind, the ' supers,' the money takers, the boys who went 
round selling nuts and cakes, wine and ale, new books and 
tobacco : there were the watermen required to carry the 




audience to and fro. Why, the shutting of the Theatres 
must have thrown out of employ many hundreds of men, 
and, if we consider their wives and families, many thousands 
of people. Can we wonder if the players, one and all, were 
Cavaliers, and were ready to fight for the side which allowed 
them their daily bread ? 

But Fortune was against them. The Puritanic spirit 
prevailed. When the Parliament conquered, the theatres 
were doomed. And in 1655, by command of Thomas 
Pride, High Sheriff of Surrey, the seven bears of Paris 



222 SOUTH LONDON 

Gardens were shot by a company of soldiers. In the same 
year it is mentioned that the Hope Theatre had been 
destroyed to make room for tenements. 

The profession of actor in a time when the Puritanic 
spirit was rapidly growing stronger could not possibly be 
held in good repute. There was dancing in it : music : 
mockery : merriment : satire : low comedy : all these things the 
misguided flock enjoyed and the shepherd deplored. The 
Mayor, long before the Theatres were suppressed, would never 
allow a theatre to be set up within his jurisdiction : had that 
jurisdiction extended beyond the various Bars : had there not, 
fortunately, happened to exist certain illogical and absurd 
Liberties and Precincts, in which the Mayor had no authority, 
there would have been no theatres in the neighbourhood of 
London, and therefore no Elizabethan drama, no Shake- 
speare, no Ben Jonson, no Massinger, no Pletcher. As things 
happened, we have to note the very remarkable fact that 
while the popular love for the theatre increased year by year ; 
while the theatre became the teacher of history, the satirist of 
manners, the home of music and of poetry ; the ministers and 
preachers thundered perpetually against it, yet prevailed not 
at all, until the Civil War broke out, and the power fell into 
the hands of the Puritans. For instance, one John Field, the 
father of one of the most famous players, Nathan Field, 
wrote to the Earl of Leicester as early as 1585 reviling him 
for having interfered * on the behalf of evil men as of late you 
did for players, to the great griefe of all the godly,' and 
adjuring him not to encourage their wickedness, and * the 
abuses that are wont to be nourished by those impure inter- 
ludes and plays.' And the same divine, two years later, 
wrote an attack upon the theatre in consequence of the acci- 
dent at Paris Gardens which has been already mentioned. 
The theatre was forcibly suppressed in the Civil War, but it 
was never forgotten, and the moment that the Restoration 
allowed it was opened again. But to our day the old Puri- 



THE SHOW FOLK 223 

tanism continues, in a now feeble and impotent way, to 
consider the Theatre as the chosen home of the Devil. 

Nathan Field, though the son of such a father, was ready 
to meet all comers in defence of the stage. In 16 16 one 




IMRRIOR OF THE OI D SWAN THEATRE 

Sutton, Preacher at St. Mary Overies, denounced the Theatre 
and all connected with it. Field answered him manfully, 
telling him plainly that he, the preacher, is disloyal, in preacl}- 
ing from his' pulpit against people who are licensed and 



224 SOUTH LONDON 

patronised by the King. The players were at all times equal 
to the task of covering the preacher with derision ; but 
derision seldom convinces or converts. 

The general opinion of players remains that they have at 
all times been a penniless tribe, eating the ' corn in the green ; ' 
borrowing ; spending their money in riotous living. This 
opinion is not by any means always true. The musician, the 
mummer, the dancer, and the tumbler were all regarded much 
in the same light ; they were despised ; they did not fight like 
the soldier ; they did not produce like the craftsman ; they did 
not, like the priest, say mass and forgive sins ; they did not 
heal the sick ; they knew no law ; their only function in the 
world was to amuse ; to make men laugh. It is very remark- 
able that directly the players ceased to be dependent on 
noble lords, as soon as they appealed to the public and 
received money from those who came to see them perform, 
they became prudent men of business. They may have been a 
cheerful tribe ; they were, however, well to do, and, so far as can 
be learned, a thrifty tribe. They made money, not by writing 
plays, nor by acting them, but by being shareholders in 
the company with which they played. Burbage, Alleyn, 
Heminge, Sly, Field, Schanke, not to speak of Shakespeare, 
all appear to have lived in comfort, and to have died 
possessed of moderate fortunes. 

The poets, certainly, continued, as poets have always 
been, penniless and in debt. By the end of the sixteenth 
century the earliest of the dramatic poets, Marlowe, Peele, 
Nash, Greene — that turbulent roystering profligate band whom 
everybody loved while everybody reproved — had passed away. 
The early extravagance vanished. The later poets, Ben 
Jonson, Beaumont, Fletcher, Massinger, led more godly lives. 
Yet they were often harassed for want of money. Three of 
them, Massinger, Field and Daborne, write to Henslow asking 
for an advance of 5/. on the security of a play which is worth 
ten pounds in addition to what they have had. All those, in 



THE SHOW FOLK 225 

fact, were poor, and remained poor, who attempted to live by 
poetic literature alone. 

The poets have had enough attention paid to them : let 
us consider the Company of Actors who played at the Globe 
and the Rose, the Hope and the Lion, and lived on and near 
the Bankside. The books of St. Saviour's (see Rendle's 
* Southwark,' App. p. 26) are full of references to the actors 
who died and were buried here, whose children were baptised 
here or buried here. The name of William Shakespeare, un- 
fortunately, does not occur. Among the actors, and first and 
chief, was Richard Burbage — like Shakespeare, a Warwick- 
shire man. In person he was under the middle stature, and 
grew fat and scant of breath. But no actor of the time had 
so great a power over his audience. It was his father who 
built the very first permanent theatre — called The Theatre at 
Shoreditch. In consequence of a dispute with the landlord, 
he pulled down the house, carried the timbers across the river 
to Bankside, and set up the Globe. 

There was Kempe, the low comedian, who succeeded 
Tarlton in that line. He was a great dancer : on one occa- 
sion he danced all the way from Norwich to London, taking 
nine days for the work : he was accompanied by one Thomas 
Sly, who played the tabor and the pipe for him. As he passed 
through the villages the girls came running out to dance with 
him along the road till he tired them out. He was a fellow 
of infinite drollery, with jokes and acting such as pleased 
the ' groundlings ' well. There was a kind of entertainment 
popular at the time called a jig. It was a monologue for 
the most part, but might be played by two or more, in which 
the words were interrupted by songs and dances : the jig was 
like the farce which used to be played after the tragedy. This 
worthy lived in Bankside, but I believe there is no record of 
his death. 

Another excellent player was John Lowin or Lewin. He 
also lived in the Liberty of the Clink. But he lived too long. 

Q 



226 SOUTH LONDON 

He survived the suppression of Theatres, and in his old age 
had no craft or art or mastery by which to earn his bread 
save that which was proscribed. He wrote for assistance to 
a patron, and he quoted the lover's words applied to the 
beggar : 

Silence in love betrays more woe 

Than words, though ne'er so witty ; 
The beggar that is dumb, you know, 
Deserves a double pity. 

Among the low comedians Robert Armin must not be 
forgotten. He attracted Tarlton's attention when a mere 
boy. The veteran comedian adopted him and taught him. 
I know not whether he, or Kempe, was the true successor to 
that unrivalled Ipuffoon. He is described by some rhymester 

as — 

Honest gamesome Robert Armin, 

That tickles the spleen like a harmless vermi 

I have already mentioned Nathan Field the player : he 
was also Nathan Field the dramatist. He brought into the 
latter profession the carelessness about money that belonged 
to the former. There are indications — only indications, it is 
true — that there was in him something of the temperament of 
a Micawber, or a Harold Skimpole, a constitutional inability 
to understand the meaning of addition and subtraction or the 
translation of money into its equivalent in eating and drinking. 
He took a wife when he was no longer quite young, and he 
became jealous. Hence the epigram, ' De Agello et Othello : ' 

Field is, in sooth, an actor : all men know it ; 
And is the true Othello of the poet : 
I wonder if 'tis true, as people tell us. 
That like the character he is most jealous. 
If it be so, and many living sweare it. 
It takes not little from the actor's merit. 
Since, as the Moor is jealous of his wife, 
Field can display the passion to the life. 



THE SHOW FOLK 227 

Who remembers John Schanke ? He, like Kempe and 
Armin, carried on the traditions of low comedy. He was 
great in the invention of 'jigs.' A notable 'jig' was that 
called ' Schanke's Ordinary,' in which several performers took 
part. There is an odd story told by Collier of a ' Schanke, a 
player.' It was in the year 1642. There came galloping to 
London three of the Lord General's officers with the news 
that there had been a great battle in which the London 
Companies had been cut to pieces, and 20,000 men had 
fallen on both sides. They spread their news as they rode 
through the villages : they spread it abroad in the city. It 
was ascertained on inquiry that there had not been any battle 
at all, but that those three men —Captain Wilson, Lieutenant 
Whitney, and one Schanke, a player — were simply runaways. 
Therefore they were all clapped in the Gatehouse, and brought 
to undergo punishment according to martial law ' for their 
base cowardliness.' 

One remarks that the race of comic actors or low comedians 
never becomes extinct. That power of always seizing on the 
comic side in everything, of always being able to make an 
audience laugh throughout a whole piece, is never, happily, 
taken away from a world which would be too sad without it. 
Great poets do not occur more than once in a century : great 
novelists not more than twice : but the low comedian, the 
comic man, whose face, whose voice, whose carriage, are as 
humorous as his words, never fails us. Tarlton is followed 
by Kempe, Kempe by Armin, Armin by Schanke. So Rob- 
son follows Liston, and Toole follows Robson, with lesser 
lights besides. 

There are many other actors. The painstaking Collier 
finds out what parts they played and where they lived. Alas ! 
He tells us no more. Perhaps there is no more to tell. The 
rank and file of the theatrical company are never a very 
interesting collection. Underwood, Toovey, EcclestOn, Cowley, 
Cooke, Sly, Argan — they are shadows that have long since 

Q2 



228 SOUTH LONDON 

passed out, made an exit, and so an end. They were for- 
gotten by the audience the day after they were dead. Why 
seek to revive their memory when there is not a single solitary 
fact to go upon ? A bone would be something : out of the 
skull of Yorick we might perhaps reconstruct his life, with all 
the adventures, love-making, disappointments, distresses and 
triumphs. 

We know the place where they all lived ; the place of a 
continual Fair without any booths, yet everything offered for 
sale : the music to cheer your heart — you could command it 
had you money in purse ; the wine to raise your courage— 
you could call for it ; the dancing to charm your eye — any girl 
would dance for you if you paid her ; the new play to fill 
you with lofty thoughts — but you must pay for your seat ; the 
jig to bring you back to the level of earth — or perhaps a little 
lower — you could buy it ; the eyes of Dalilah at the sign of 
the Swan in the Hoopc were directed to your purse ; the 
ruffians belonging to the kennels and the bear garden ; the 
drawers of the taverns and the sack and the tobacco, the 
boats and the boatmen, were all at your service. The players 
lived in this riot and racket, themselves a part : we catch 
glimpses of them, we can discern them amid the crowd : 
sometimes one of their women is ducked for a shrew ; one of 
them is clapped in the Clink Prison : some are haled before 
the Bishop for acting in Lent — these unreasonable people 
really object to starving in Lent ! And the place and the 
people and their manners and customs are deplorable but 
delightful ; they are picturesque to the highest degree, but 
they are equally reprehensible. I wish we could go back four 
hundred years and see and listen for ourselves : but with all 
our admiration for the Elizabethan drama, I do not think that 
I should like to be one of the Show Folk or to live with them 
in that jovial colony on the Bankside in the days of the 
Globe and the Rose, the Hope and the Swan. 



229 



CHAPTER XII 

BELOW BRIDGE 

' Below Bridge ' covers Tooley Street and her lanes : 
Horselydown, Bermondsey, Rotherhithe, Deptford, Green- 
wich, and Woolwich. The railway has ruined one end of 
Tooley Street, which is a corruption of St. Olave's Street. 
Perhaps it was ruined before the railway appeared at all. 
Certainly no one would believe that this dark and narrow 
street was once a place of Palaces. The Prior of Lewes had 
here, opposite St. Olave's Church, his Inn or Town House: here 
the Abbot of St. Augustine had his Inn : and here, we have 
seen, was the house of Sir John P'astolf. Here was the 
Pilgrim's Way to Bermondsey Rood. Some came across 
the bridge ; some by boat, which was far more convenient, 
to Tooley Stairs ; some to Battlebridge Stairs ; some to 
Pickle Herring Stairs. The way lay along Tooley Street 
and by 'Barmsie' Lane through the fields and gardens : 
a lovely rural lane. Beyond Tooley Street lies a quarter 
bounded on the North by the River, and on the East by St. 
Saviour's Dock : a quarter which is certainly the most 
industrious in the whole of London. It is called Horsely- 
down, the derivation of which seems obvious, but deriva- 
tions are not to be trusted, however obvious. We may take 
it for granted, because we can prove the fact by looking at 
Roques' map of 1745, that there were meadows where horses 
grazed as soon as the embankment was up, and the ground 
drained. There was some kind of common here at one time : 
here suicides and persons deprived of Christian rites were 
buried. There was also a Fair held at Horselydown. The 



230 SOUTH LONDON 

industries made their appearance in the eighteenth century, 
but they came gradually. It is now a place of most remark- 
able variety as regards occupations. All along the river 
and the bank of the Dock, formerly Savoy Dock, there are 
wharves: inland are bonded warehouses, granaries, leather 
warehouses, hide warehouses, hop warehouses, and wool 
warehouses. There are tanneries, currieries, fur and skin 
dyeing works, breweries, rice mills, mustard mills, pepper 
mills, dyeing works, dog's food manufactories, vinegar works, 
bottle works, iron foundries, wooden hoop manufactories, 
cooperages, roperies, smithies, biscuit manufactories, oil and 
colour works, pin manufactories, varnish works, and dis- 
tilleries. All this in a district half a mile long and a quarter 
of a mile broad. Between the factories and the warehouses 
are houses for the workmen and the foremen. On the south 
side stands the Church, almost the ugliest Church in London : 
next to the Church is, or was, a few years ago, a street which 
has something of the look and feeling of a Close. 

It is a great pity that in the whole of South London 
lying east of the High Street there is not a single beautiful, 
or even picturesque Church. Look at them ! St. Olave's, 
St. John, Horselydown, St. Mary Magdalen, St. Mary, 
Rotherhithe, the four oldest churches in the quarter. It 
cannot be pretended that these structures inspire veneration 
or even respect. You may see drawings of them in Maitland. 
St. Olave's was rebuilt in 1737, St. John's, Horselydown, in 
I735> St. Mary Magdalen in 1680, and St. Mary, Rotherhithe, 
in 1713 on the site of the older church. In 1738 the steeple 
was added. The four churches are therefore all examples of 
the church architecture of nearly the same period. 

Of all the quarters and parts of London that of 
Horselydown is the least known and the least visited, except 
by those whose business takes them there every day. There is, 
in fact, nothing to be seen : the wharves block out the river : 
the warehouses darken the streets, the places where people 



BELOW BRIDGE 



231 



live are not interesting : there is not an ancient memory or 
association, or any ancient fragment of a building, to make 
one desire to visit Horselydown. When we pass the Dock, 
we find ourselves in quite a different quarter : the wharves are 
arranged along the river wall, called the Bermondsey Wall, 
but behind the wharves there are fewer factories and more 
people. Alas ! poor people ! It is a grimy place to live in : 
of greenery or garden land there is none. There is not even 




A FETE AT HORSELYDOWN IN I59O 
{Front the Painting by G. Hoffnagel, at Hatjield) 

any access to the river except by one or two narrow stairs : 
the * works ' are those whose near neighbourhood is not gene- 
rally desired : places where they make leather and curry it : or 
where they make glue or vinegar. Fortunately, however, the 
good people of Bermondsey are spared the handlmg of 
tallow, bones, or soap. Things might therefore have been 
worse. This is the industrial centre of South London, and 
it occupies, including Horselydown, St. Olave's, Bermondsey, 
and Rotherhithe, something like a quarter of a million, which 



232 SOUTH LONDON 

is a good-sized city in itself. On the one side of St. Saviour's 
Dock we may step aside to look at two streets, which fifty 
years ago represented the lowest kind of vice and brutality, 
and the worse kind of human pigsties, Talbot Street and 
London Street. The former was taken over by Dickens to 
adorn his ' Oliver Twist ' — lugged in, for indeed it does not 
belong there. 

The condition of the latter is figured in Wilkinson's 
* London Illustrated ' in the year 1806. 

The ugliness of the neighbourhood remains, but some of 
the dirt has been washed away. 

It seems impossible to create a quarter of workmen's 
cottages or residences which shall be beautiful. First there 
is the slum with a row of two- or four-roomed cottages in a 
narrow court : the windows are broken : the banisters of the 
staircase are broken away to be burned : the sanitary appli- 
ances are terrible : the court is a laystall. Some of these 
delightful places still survive in Southwark. The next step 
is to build streets for working men in places where the ground 
is not too valuable. Thus the town of Bromley near Bow 
sprang into existence. It consists entirely of monotonous 
streets with monotonous houses, all small, all ugly, all built 
after the same pattern : the result being dreary and dispiriting. 
Then come the model dwelling-houses : the huge barrack, of 
which, Bermondsey way, there are enormous stacks, accommo- 
dating the working classes by the hundred thousand. There 
is not the smallest attempt at making these places beautiful : 
they are simple cubes of grey brick with rows and lines of 
windows. Outside they may be models of economy in space. 
Once within, they may be models of convenience ; but there 
is another side. The moral effect of this piling up of family 
on family is reported to be injurious in ways not contemplated 
by the founders : the quiet folk are terrorised by the rowdy ; 
the children are demoralised : there are dangers not expected, 
and temptations not considered : in a word, the model lodging- 



BELOW BRIDGE 



233 



houses of Southwark and Bcrmondsey are not, in every 
respect, adapted to a model population. 

It is difficult between London Bridge and Rotherhithe to 
get at the river, except at two or three spots where the old 
stairs can be approached by a narrow passage. There is an 
embankment or terrace : the whole bank is occupied for 
commercial purposes : business men do not like strangers on 
these wharves : and for all practical purposes the dwellers 
below Bridge might just as well be a dozen miles inland. If, 




THE OLD ELEPHANT AND CASTLE, 1814 

however, the resident of Bermondsey can sometimes — say, on 
Saturday afternoon—get down to the stairs and look out upon 
the river, he will see close at hand, not only the ships and 
barges that lie about the wharves, but the grand new Water- 
gate of London, the most appropriate entrance that could be 
devised to the port — the new Tower Bridge. 

Where Bermondsey Wall ended and Rotherhithe began 
the houses, until fifty years ago, rapidly grew thinner, until 
Rotherhithe itself consisted of little more than a single street, 



234 SOUTH LONDON 

with docks, and stairs, and taverns on the riverside, and on 
the other side lanes leading to cottages and cottage gardens. 
The Commercial Docks were opened in 1807, but the place 
still preserved something of its old character until quite 
recently. It consisted of a district round which the river 
flowed on the north and east. Like all the country about the 
Thames, it was low-lying, and originally a marsh. Even 
as late as 1830 it was imperfectly drained, and a good 
part of it remained still a marsh. Thus the road, now 
called South wark Park Road — why could they not leave 
the old name, Blue Anchor Road? — even in 1830 wound 
through a marsh covered with ditches and ponds. On the 
east side, near the junction of Blue Anchor Road with 
Jamaica Row, there was a most remarkable collection of 
ponds and islands, ending with a broad stream or ditch running 
into the river at Rotherhithe stairs. Other ditches or streams 
lay or flowed at will over the levels, making islands which 
were approached by bridges. The character of the place was 
entirely that of a marsh : in fact, it was the last part of 
London where there lingered still the appearance of a marsh. 
The names show this. We have The Reed Bed ; Providence 
Island ; the Seven Islands ; the West Pond ; the East Pond ; 
Broom Fields ; Halfpenny Hatch, repeated more than once. 
The numerous Ropewalks scattered about show that the ground 
was cheap, and the factories where they make glue, soap, 
brimstone, turpentine, white lead, and paper are there, which 
require plenty of room and few people to enjoy the smell. 

Leaving Rotherhithe, we arrive at a place much more 
interesting, namely, Deptford. They have done their best to 
spoil Deptford of late years : they have taken away the 
old Trinity Almshouses : they have built new streets : but 
a good deal of the old Deptford remains. I walked about it 
nearly every day for three months some twelve years ago, 
reconstructing the Deptford of 1750 from the Deptford of 
1886. It is like reconstructing the face in youth from a 



BELOW BRIDGE 



235 



portrait in middle life. I succeeded at last, to my own satis- 
faction, and, I hope, to the satisfaction of my readers when 
the eighteenth-century Deptford appeared as the background 
of a novel. It was not a very big place : it consisted chiefly 




VIEW NEAR THE STORE-HOUSE, DEPTFORD 
{From an Engraving by John Boy dell, 1750) 

of an old church in the lower part of the town, and a new 
church in the upper part : there were two almshouses : there 
was the Hall where the Brethren of the Trinity House 
assembled every year before their service at St Nicolas and 



236 SOUTH LONDON 

their feast at their house on Tower Hill. The town was full 
of sailors and naval officers : the latter were not remarkable for 
the finicking ways of the beaux their contemporaries : on the 
contrary, they despised such ways — * their fashions I hate, like 
a pig in a gate.' When they were young they made love all 
the time they were ashore, except when they were drinking 
and taking tobacco at the tavern — these occupations, truly, 
left the honest fellows less time for love than might have been 
expected. There were officers' taverns and seamen's taverns : 
rum, however, was the favourite drink at both. And, really, 
it would surprise you to hear the songs they sang, and to 
observe the cheerfulness with which they put up with every- 
thing : favouritism : long and hopeless service in the lower 
ranks : bad food on board : long years of foreign service : and 
for all the gallantry that these brave fellows showed in service 
not a word of thanks : not a hint at promotion. 

The. Town consisted mostly of a single street : there were 
shops, but poor things : there was a market : fruit and vege- 
tables were brought in from the country round : within a few 
steps of the town one was in the loveliest country, with the 
Ravensbourne flowing between meadows and under the 
branches of willows and of alders. 

The dockyard of Deptford was founded by Henry the 
Eighth, and continued till 1869. It was at Deptford that 
most of the ships were built for the Royal Navy in the six- 
teenth and seventeenth centuries : it was here that Drake's 
ship, the Golden Hind, in which he had made his voyage 
round the world, was laid up, her cabin turned into a place of 
entertainment. She remained here, an object of pilgrimage 
for the Londoners, for many }ears. She was a good deal cut 
about, because everybody wanted to Carry away a piece of 
her. At last she was suffered to fall to pieces. One pious 
archaeologist got a chair made out of her timbers and pre- 
sented it to the Bodleian Library. 

Pepys was often at Deptford in his capacity of Secre- 



BELOW BRIDGE 237 

tary of the Admiralty. * Up and down the yard all the 
morning, and seeing the seamen exercise, which they do 
already very handsomely. Then to dinner. . . . After dinner 
and taking our leave of the officers of the yard, we walked to 
the waterside, and on our way walked into the ropeyard, 
'where 1 had a look into the tarhouses and other places, and 
took great notice of all the several works belonging to the 
making of a cable.' 

It was at Deptford that Pepys visited Lady Sandwich, 
* where I stood with great pleasure an hour or two by her 
bedside, she lying prettily in bed.' During the plague year, 
when he and his wife were staying at Woolwich, he goes over 
to Deptford nearly every day, and was continually feasting 
with his friends and always ' very merry,' though the plague 
was slaying its thousands only a mile or two away. 

Another visitor to Deptford who left a lasting memory was 
Peter the Great, who stayed here in 1698, studying ship archi- 
tecture. The people of the town had the satisfaction of seeing 
the Czar of Muscovy— not quite so great a man then as he is 
now— smoking a pipe of tobacco and drinking brandy in 
their taverns every evening. By day they might see him 
working among the dockyard men at the various parts of a 
ship and its gear. 

The most interesting person, however, who is connected 
with the annals of Deptford is certainly John Evelyn. 

Evelyn was not a great writer, nor a great scholar, nor a 
great statesman : he was not great in anything that he did : 
yet his memory remains, and will remain long after that of 
much stronger men has been forgotten. He wrote a great 
deal, and since some of his writings survive after three 
hundred years it is manifest that he must have written well. 
He was a strong royalist who knew how to take care of his 
own skin. In order to avoid being dragged into the army 
and fighting for the cause which he loved, he went abroad 
and travelled in Europe for four years, during which time the 



238 SOUTH LONDON 

royal cause fell to pieces, and those who fought for it were 
ruined. In 1647 he came home again ; m 1649 he went back 
to France, where he stayed till 1652. By this time he had 
made many discoveries and observations on art and anti- 
quities. He also married a wife, the daughter of Charles's 
ambassador at Paris. Through his wife he obtained posses- 
sion of Sayes Court, Deptford, where, with a few breaks, one 
of which was to allow Peter the Great to use the house, he 
lived till nearly the end of his life. He was one of the 
founders and first Fellows of the Royal Society : he was a 
member of many commissions : he was the first Treasurer of 
Queen Mary's new naval hospital, and held many other offices. 

In quite a brief note Pepys sums up the character and 
the accomplishments of this estimable man : 

* Nov. 5, 1665. By water to Deptford, and here made a 
visit to Mr. Evelyn, who among many other things showed me 
most excellent painting in little : in distemper ; in Indian 
ink ; water colours ; graving : and above all, the whole secret 
of mezzotinto, and the manner of it, which is very pretty, 
and good things done with it. He read to me very much also 
of his discourse he hath been many years and now is about, 
about Gardening, which will be a most noble and pleasant 
piece. He read me part of a play or two of his making ; 
very good, but not as he conceits them, I think, to be. He 
showed me his " Hortus Hyemalis," leaves laid up in a book 
of several plants kept dry, which preserve colour, however, 
and look very finely, better than a Herball. In fine, a most 
excellent person he is, and must be allowed a little for 
conceitedness ; but he may well be so, being a man so 
much above others.' 

His memory survives on account of the personal character 
of the man which is revealed in his works, and of the high 
opinion in which he was held. * A typical instance,' says his 
latest biographer (' Diet, of Nat. Biog.'), * of the accomplished 
and public-spirited country gentleman of the Restoration, a 



BELOW BRIDGE 



239 



pious and devoted member of the Church of England, and a 
staunch loyaHst in spite of his grave disapproval of the 
manners of the court/ Above all things, it might be added, 
he was a gardener, and all gardeners are amiable and all 
gardeners are personally popular. 

Of Greenwich Palace I have already spoken. There is 
little else in Greenwich except the Palace or Hospital. The 
Almshouse known as Norfolk College must not be forgotten, 




GEORGE HOTEL, BOROUGH 



however. It is on the east side of the Hospital, and stands 
behind a stone terrace, overlooking the river. The College 
consists of a quadrangle containing a chapel and a small 
hall or common room, with gardens at the back. This kind 
of almshouse is common, but it is difficult to build it so that 
■it shall not be beautiful. Norfolk College is quite a beautiful 
place. Finer and larger is Morden College, up the hill, 
designed for decayed merchants. 



240 SOUTH LONDON 

This is the end of London : a few yards beyond Norfolk 
College the houses stop suddenly: on the tongue of land 
projecting north formed by a loop of the river there are 
hardly any houses at all : the place is a dreary flat as far 
as Woolwich. The London County Council limits include 
Woolwich and Plumstead ; but that broad area covered 
by continuous houses which begins at Battersea ends at 
Greenwich. 



241 



CHAPTER XIII 

THE LATER SANCTUARY 

The Sanctuary created and crossed by the Church for the 
refuge of those who had fallen into temptation became, as 
we know, the resort of the rogue, the murderer, and the 
habitual criminal. Within the precincts of St.-Martin'?-le- 
Grand were carried on with impunity all the trades and 
methods of producing things counterfeit. The Sanctuary of 
Westminster was a scandal and a disgrace. These places 
had been finally abolished after much trouble : the City 
officers could march their rogues to Newgate without fear 
of a rescue from St. Martin's. The people of Westminster 
could lie down at night without fear of housebreakers 
from Sanctuary. At the same time the custom of holding 
and seeking sanctuary was too deep-rooted to be quickly 
abolished. Perhaps there was something comfortable in the 
thought that there should be a place, however small, where 
the officers of the law were not admitted, and where rogues 
should be unmolested. It was a loophole for repentance, 
perhaps : it was a gleam of sunshine on the path of the out- 
law. So the custom was continued well into the eighteenth 
century. In this chapter I am going to recall the memory 
of these later Sanctuaries. As may be imagined, literature 
says little about them. But it says enough to show that there 
were places dotted about London which served all the purposes 
of the old sanctuaries without the restraints of ecclesiastical 
government : in fact, there was no government, except on 
purely democratic principles. In these places lived rogues 
and villains of all kinds : here the thief-taker came to find 

R 



242 SOUTH LONDON 

his man — observe that this functionary was admitted ; the 
thief-taker ventured where the sheriffs officer could not. 
Why was this ? Because the London rogue had a sense of 
justice : no man could expect to go on for ever : when a 
man's time was up, let him give place to his successor. The 
thief-taker, therefore, was a recognised official : it was his 
duty to assign to every man his proper length of rope. This 
allowance expended, it was the duty of the rogue to get up 
when he was called, go away quietly with the thief-taker, and 
get hanged in due course. Otherwise, there would have been 
no living to be made by the rogues on account of the com- 
petition of numbers. The name of Alsatia had been long 
forgotten, but the asylum still remained. 

In the ' Fortunes of Nigel ' we are made acquainted with 
the Alsatia of Fleet Street. There were other places equally 
secure for rogues, besides Alsatia. Such were Whetstone 
Park in Lincoln's Inn Fields ; Fullwood's Rents, Holborn ; 
Milford Lane, Strand ; Montagu Close, Southwark ; and others. 
All these were gradually extinguished ; not by any summary 
procedure ; not by turning out the rogues and forcing them 
to scatter ; not by marching off the whole population to 
prison ; but by the slower and more gradual process of 
transformation. This process began when the parts and 
places around became respectable. There is something 
chilling and repellent to the common rogue about the 
proximity of respectability : he does not like to be in its 
neighbourhood : in this way these degenerate and unlawful 
sanctuaries gradually fell into decay. One alone remained, 
when all the others had disappeared. It was in that part of 
Southwark — that part which is still a slum — called Mint 
Street, nearly opposite St. George's Church in the High 
Street. This street, with its alleys and courts, was inhabited 
by as villainous a collection as even the eighteenth century, 
which in point of villains was rich beyond its predecessors, 
could not equal. They had retreated here from their former 



THE LATER SANCTUARY 243 

haunt in Montagu Close, as to a last fortress, which was not yet 
besieged. They lived in perfect safety here : no writ could 
be served on them : no arrest could be made : the only person 
they had to fear was, as said above, the thief-taker. 

The annals of this Sanctuary were never, unfortunately, 
kept ; it is impossible to ascertain what illustrious criminals 
were here housed and for how long. There are, however, one 
or two little histories of the Mint which will serve to show 
us at once the public spirit, the courage, and the immunity 
\yith which the people of the later Sanctuary lived and 
acted. 

The first story belongs to the year 171 5. The case of 
Dormer v. Dormer and Jones came on for hearing at 
Westminster Hall. It was a divorce case, in which the 
co-respondent had been a footman in the plaintiff's house. 
There seems to have been no? defence practically. The 
verdict of the Jury was for the plaintiff, with 5,000/. damages. 
Now, consider for a moment what that verdict meant. In 
these days, when a defendant without any private means at 
all is mulcted in damages and costs, whether of 5,000/. or of 
100/., he simply smiles. He is not in the least degree affected. 
Nothing worse than bankruptcy can happen to him, and 
when a man has nothing bankruptcy presents few terrots. 
In Portugal Street subridet vacuus 7'iator— the insolvent 
pilgrim smiles cheerfully. But in those days it was very 
different. To inflict damages of 5,000/ meant simply that 
the Jury considered the case one in which the defendant, who 
could not be tried in the criminal courts, could only be 
adequately punished by being locked up for the whole of his 
remaining days in a debtor's prison, where, since he was only 
a footman whose relations were probably unable to assist him 
and certainly unable to maintain him, he would speedily take 
his place on the common side, and there he would be slowly 
done to death by insufficient food and insufficient clothing, 
by privation, cold, fever and misery. 

R 3 



244 SOUTH LONDON 

The Jury therefore gave this verdict with deliberate 
intention. It meant prison and slow starvation and in- 
sufficient warmth, and so everybody instantly understood, 
including Mr. Jones himself. In a moment the officers would 
have laid hands upon the unhappy but undeserving footman. 
But he was too quick for them : he turned : he fled : he hurled 
himself down Westminster Hall through the crowd of lawyers, 
witnesses, booksellers, glovesellers, and visitors : he tbre 
across New Palace Yard, now pursued by the officers : he 
made for the 'Bridge,' that is, the pier so called, for as yet 
there was no Bridge : he jumped into the first boat and 
shoved off. When the bailiffs arrived breathless at the Stairs, 
they saw their prisoner already half way across the river. 
They too jumped into a boat : for some reason or other — one 
knows not why — it was most unlucky — their boat took a 
long time to get off : something was wrong with the painter : 
the ropes were knotted : the stretchers wanted to be set right : 
the oars were on the wrong sides: the men were slow in 
getting off their coats : finally, when she was cast loose the 
boat proved to be another Noah's Ark for creeping slowly 
over the face of the waters. Jones therefore got safely ashore 
on the other side, and the bailiffs turned back with a good 
deal of cursing. Once ashore, the fugitive made straight to 
Mint Street, as to a Levitical City which was also a City of 
Refuse. I know not what became of him afterwards. It 
was a hive where all the bees were busy. Jones could not 
eat the bread of idleness : he therefore, one may certainly 
conclude, became a rogue by profession and in due course 
met his fate bravely with white ribbons round his cap, an 
orange in one hand, a Prayer-book in the other, and a large 
nosegay in his shirt front. 

Here is another story of the same Eighteenth Century 
Sanctuary. It will seem incredible that the Executive should 
have been so incapable, but the story is literally true. 

Things being in so satisfactory and settled a condition, 



THE LATER SANCTUARY 245 

the Law being so triumphantly defied, at the Mint in South- 
wark, some of the residents or collegians naturally desired to 
go farther afield, and to establish more Sanctuaries or Law- 




MINT STREET, BOROUGH 



246 SOUTH LONDON 

defying colonies on the other side of the river, which was 
reported to be ripe for tjiese settlements. No reports of 
Meetings, Proceedings, and Resolutions held and passed on 
the subject have come down to us. However, that matters 
very little. Every great movement, we know, is the work of 
one man. Therefore there arose a Prophet — the Prophet as 
Rogue. He perceived, understood, and presently began to 
preach that a 'long felt want' — call it rather a 'need' — 
existed, which it was his duty to supply. The old Sanctuaries 
of North London, he pointed out, had fallen into decay. 
Alsatia was deplorably respectable : bailiffs had been seen in 
Milford Lane : the trade of counterfeit rings was no longer 
carried on in St. Martin's. And, though there were certainly 
taverns in Clerkenwell which bailiffs regarded with a useful 
respect, it could not be denied that London needed a new 
Sanctuary. This need he called upon his friends and fellow- 
residents in the Mint to supply. He set before his hearers 
with burning eloquence — I am sure it was burning— a Vision 
of a New London, Purged ; Purified ; without honesty ; without 
morals ; without law ; with neither gallows, pillory, whipping 
post, or stocks : a City entirely in the hands of Rogues who 
would compel all the conquered City to work for them : would 
seize on all property and would live triumphantly happy with 
coitiplete control over all the Prisons. To make a beginning 
of this Millennium, he proposed, by means of colonies from the 
Mint, to plant all London with Sanctuaries until, in fulness of 
time, the City should become one huge Sanctuary, where debts 
would Clever be collected, and robbery and murder would 
never be punished. 

They chose for their new settlement a piece of ground on 
the east of Tower Hill, where Cable Street is now. They laid 
down their boundaries : they called the place the New Mint : 
they said, ' Within these limits there shall be no arrest' This 
new^ law they communicated fairly and plainly, because every- 
thing was above board, to all the catchpoles. They then sat 



THE LATER SANCTUARY 247 

down as in an impregnable fortress. Remember, that if there 
were no police, such as we now understand by the word, they 
were close to the soldiers of the Tower, who might have been 
called in to disperse this lawless establishment. However, 
nothing at all was done. They sat down triumphant. 
Presently — I know not how long afterwards — a bailiff was 
actually found to disregard the warning. You will hardly 
believe that this rash and audacious person ventured to 
arrest a New Minter within the Precincts ! 

Then the colonists arose and formed into colunrin : they 
called for music : preceded by a band of what used to be 
called the Whifflers, they marched in a procession, four 
abreast, quietly, calmly, but with settled purpose in their 
gallant and resolute faces : they carried a banner, yea, the 
Flag of Unrighteousness : they marched straight to the house 
of the offender, who, for his part, was so foolish as not to run 
away. It is, however, a weakness common to Catchpoles 
that they always put their trust in the Law. They arrested 
that Catchpole : they led him to the place where he had 
offended : and there they made an example of him. They 
tore away every shred of clothing from him : they flogged him 
all over with brooms and thorny brambles : they gave him a 
thousand lashes, so that there was not a whole inch of skin 
left upon him : they dragged him through filthy ponds and lay- 
stalls : they took him out and flogged him again : they tried to 
flog the life out of the poor wretch but failed, for he survived : 
then they dragged him again through the filth : at last they 
suffered him, bleeding and naked, to crawl home as best he 
might. I am sorry to say that I have no information as to 
the end of the New Mint adventure ; but it certainly appears 
that no one was punished for this outrage, and that no 
attempt even was made to punish anyone. Perhaps the 
memory of that gallant deed still lingers in Cable Lane ; but 
I have not ventured to inquire of the still rude and indepen- 
dent freemen, its present residents. 



24^ SOUTH LONDON 



CHAPTER XIV 

IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 

If we look at a map of South London compiled at any time 
during the eighteenth century it is surprising to observe how 
little the place had grown since the fifteenth. There runs, as 
of old, the Causeway at right angles to the Embankment. 
On either side of the Causeway or High Street or St. Margaret's 
Hill, run off right and left a few narrow streets : the conti- 
nuity of houses is broken by St. George's Church, south of 
which, although there are, here and there, detached houses 
and even rows of houses or terraces, there are open fields, 
streams, ponds and gardens. St. George's Fields, crossed by 
paths, are broad and open fields stretching out westward till 
they join Lambeth Marsh. St. Margaret's Church has long 
since vanished : he who knows the old maps can still put his 
finger on the site, but its burial ground has wholly disap- 
peared. There are four old churches in .Southwark proper-: 
St. George's, St. Saviour's, St. Thomas's, and St. Olave's. Oh 
the east are the churches of Bermondsey and Rotherhithe, not 
to speak of Deptford : on the west is Lambeth Church : on 
the south are the churches of Newington and Kennington. 
As for other institutions, there are the two great hospitals 
St. Thomas's and Guy's almost side by side : and there are 
the prisons, that of the King's Bench, the Marshalsea and the 
White Lyon. They were all on the east side of the street 
until 1756, when the King's Bench Prison was removed across 
the road nearly opposite to St. George's. Some time after 
the Marshalsea was moved further south on the site of the old 
White Lyon and including that ancient Clink. The old 



IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 



249 



Clink on Bankside had vanished. But the Borough Compter 
was still flourishing— a grimy, filthy, fever-stricken place. 

At the back of the houses and narrow streets to east and 
west, the fields began with open ditches or sewers and sluggish 
streams. * Snow's ' Fields on the east were as well known as 
St. George's in the West. * Long Lane ' ran from St. George's 




OLD HOUSE, STONEY STREET, SOUTHWARK 

to Bermondsey Church : it contained a few houses : Ber- 
mondsey Lane, commonly called Barmsie, ran from the old 
cross to the same church : it was already a street of houses. 
The most crowded part of Southwark proper was the street 
called Tooley or St. Olave's, the most ancient street in the 
Borough, originally built upon the Embankment, the Thames 



250 



SOUTH LONDON 



Street of South London. Here, in the eighteenth century, 
there were no vestiges left of the former palaces : every- 
thing had gone except a crypt or a vault : at every step one 
came upon the entrance to a court, narrow, mean and squalid : 
these courts remain, also narrow, mean and squalid, to the 
present day. There were no places in London, unless in the 




ST. THOMAS'S HOSPITAL 
{From an old Print) 

neighbourhood of Hermitage Street, Wapping, where human 
creatures had to pig together in such horrible conditions. 
There was no water supply to these courts : there was no 
lighting : there was no paving, not even with the round 
cobbles which they still called paving. 

On the west side of the High Street, of which a map is 



IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 251 

given on p. 85 of this volume, beyond St. Saviour's, the nave 
of which was fast falling into ruins, came Bankside. Alas ! 
It was deserted : not a single theatre was left : not a baiting 
Place : not a Bear to bait : there was no longer a poet or an 
actor or a musician on Bankside : there were no more evenings 
at the Falcon : there was no longer heard the tinkling of the 
guitar, and the scraping of the violin. South of Bankside lay 
two broad gardens, side by side : one called Pye Garden ; and 










10TL< 






jbeifapndjey . _^^ 










- . Z-X^ 



the other, west of Winchester House, was called Winchester 
Park. Paris Gardens were no more. Blackfriars Bridge Road, in 
which there were as yet but few houses, had been cut ruth- 
lessly right through the middle of the old Gardens ; the trees, 
once so thick and close, had been laid low, but there were still 
kitchen gardens. South of the Gardens, with an interval of 
a few side streets, we come upon St. George's Fields, and 
on the west of these fields upon Lambeth Marsh, which was 



252 



SOUTH LONDON 



cut up into ropewalks, tenter grounds, nurseries, and kitchen 
<^ardens. Where Waterloo Station now stands were Cuper's 
Gardens : there were half a dozen Pleasure Gardens, of which 
more anon : there were turnpikes wherever two roads met. 
But perhaps the most remarkable feature of this quarter in 
the last century was the immense number of streams and 
ditches and ponds : most of these were little better than open 
sewers : complaints were common of the pollution of these 




streams — but it was in vain : people will always throw every- 
thing that has to be ejected into the nearest running water if 
they can. One wants the map in order to understand how 
numerous were these streams. There was one murky brook 
which ran along the backs of all the houses on the east side 
of High Street — the prisoners of the Marshalsea and the 
King's Bench grumbled about it continually : another corre- 
sponding stream ran behind the west side of High Street. 



IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 



253 



Maiden Lane, now called Park Lane, rejoiced in one : Gravel 
Lane, more blessed still, was happy with a ditch or stream on 
each side : Dirty Lane had one : another ran along Bandy 
Leg Walk : other streams flowed, or crept, or crawled, across 
Lambeth Marsh and St George's Fields. Where there were 
no houses, and therefore no pollutions, the streams of this 
broad marsh, lying beneath and between the orchards, 
fringing the gardens, and crossing the open fields, were a 




QUEEN ELIZABETH'S FREE GRAMMAR SCHOOL 

pleasant feature, though they had no stones to prattle over, 
but only the dark peaty humus of the marsh : and the water 
channels necessitated frequent little rustic bridges which were 
sometimes picturesque. Some of the streams again were of 
considerable size, especially that called ' The Shore ' by 
Roques. It was also called the Effra. Along the banks of 
this stream stood here and there cottages, having little 
gardens in front and rustic bridges across the stream. But 
whether these streams ran or whether they crawled, behind 



254 



SOUTH LONDON 



or beside the crowded houses they were foul and fetid and 
charged with all the things which should be buried away or 




ANCIENT BUILDINGS, HIGH STREET, BOROUGH 
{From a Drawing by T. Higham, 1820) 

burned way : they were laden with fevers and malaria and 
' putrid ' sore throat. 

The High Street of Southwark is now a crowded 
thoroughfare, because it is the main artery of a town con- 



IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 255 

taining a population of many hundreds of thousands. In the 
last century it was quite as animated because it was one of 
the main arteries by which London was in communication 
with the country. An immense number of coaches, carts, 




THE FALCON TAVERN, BANKSIDE 

waggons, and 'caravans ' passed every day up and down the 
High Street, some stopping or starting in Southwark itself; 
some going over London Bridge to their destination in the 
City. The coach of the first half of the century can be 
restored from Hogarth. That of the latter half of the 



256 



SOUTH LONDON 



century was in all respects like the reviVed coaches of the 
present day, adapted for rapid travelling along a smooth 
road. The carts were carriers' carts on two wheels with a 
tilt or cover ; they carried parcels and small packages, and 
on occasions, but not always, one or two passengers. The 










AN OLD MILL, BANKSIDE 

waggons, which carried heavy goods and passengers not in a 
hurry, were also covered with a tilt ; their broad wheels and 
capacious interior can be restored, as well as the coach, from 
that most trustworthy painter of his own time. As for the 
caravans, I am in some doubt. I suppose, however, that a 



IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 



257 



caravan was then what it is now, in which case it was an 
elementary Pullman's car, in which people and their effects 
were drawn slowly along the road, in a four-wheeled covered 
cart. Perhaps the passengers slept in the car at night, drawn 
up by the roadside, like the gipsies. But of this theory I 
have no kind of proof. 

From the Borough alone, without counting the vehicles 
which passed through to or from the City, there were sent 







■,:L^ — r.y:^^ 



JOHN BUNYAN'S MEETING HOUSE, BANKSIDE 



out, every week, one hundred and forty-three stage coaches : 
one hundred and twenty-one waggons : and one hundred and 
ninety-six carts and caravans. And, of course, the same 
number came back every week. There was a continual suc- 
cession of departures and arrivals ; all day long, one after the 
other, the stage coaches came galloping up each to its own 
inn ; while they were still far away the people of the inn 
knew when their own coach was coming by the tune played 

S 



258 



SOUTH LONDON 



on the guard's bugle : the High Street, in fact, was like a 
railway terminus, where trains are arriving and leaving all 
day long. 

I am quite sure that we have no idea at all of the life and 
animation at a London inn when the stages were started and 







when they arrived. With as much method, and as quickly 
as the railway porters clear out the luggage and get rid of 
the train, the horses were taken out : the passengers got 
down : the coachman looked inside for his perquisites in the 



IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 



259 



shape of anything forgotten and left behind : the luggage 
was laid out : the porters seized it and carried it off to the 
hackney coach outside : the passengers followed their luggage : 
and the courtyard was ready for the next coach. Outside 
the courtyard there hung about, all day long, whole companies 
of thieves waiting for the chance of carrying off something 
unconsidered or forgotten. Generally, they stood in with the 
stable boys and the porters, who, for a trifle, were good 
enough to shjt their eyes. If a trunk was seen to lie un- 







"^-• 






^' ' 



claimed, one of them came bustling in. * Give us a hand, 
Jack,' he cried to one of the porters, as if he had been ordered 
to call for and bring away that trunk. A confederate or two 
stood at the door to trip up a pursuer or a proprietor, if there 
was one, and in a moment man and box would be lost to 
sight in a neighbouring court. Pickpockets as well abounded 
about the courtyards : outside were houses filled with dis- 
orderly folk of all kinds waiting to entrap and to tempt 
and to rob the country bumpkin. There was the couple 
ready with the confidence trick ': the generous and hospitable 



S2 



26o SOUTH LONDON 

gentleman to welcome the country lad : there was the lady 
of the ready smile : and the taverns with the doors open to 
all. The numbers of coaches and waggons I have given refer 
to South wark alone, and to the conveyances which belonged 
to the inns up and down in the High Street. But a great 
many more came across the bridge from the City daily. 
Now, if we are considering the traffic and animation of the 
roads leading to the City, remember that the High Street^ 
Borough, was only one of many main lines of traffic. There 
were, besides, the roads to the North : to the Eastern 
counties : to the Midlands : to the West : and to the North- 
west. Day and night the roads all round London were 
thronged with these coaches, carts, caravans, and waggons : 
but these vehicles were for ordinary folk only : for tradesmen, 
attorneys, clergymen, farmers, riders (that is, commercial 
travellers) and servants : a nobleman or a country gentleman 
scorned to travel in a public conveyance : he came up to 
London, if not in his own coach, then in a post-chaise, of 
which there were thousands on the road. Add to these the 
horsemen, of whom there were an immense number riding 
from place to place : add, further, the long droves of cattle, 
sheep and pigs : the cattle, however, to save their feet and to 
keep them in condition, were mostly taken along ' drives ' by 
the roadside, where the ground was soft. One of these can 
still be seen on the other side of Hampstead. Pedestrians 
there were also by thousands : soldiers : sailors : gipsies : 
strolling actors : tinkers and tramps— the land was full of 
tramps : in a word the roads near London were crowded and 
-animated and full of adventure, character, incident, and 
picturesqueness : indeed, the dismal and deserted condition 
of the modern road makes it difficult for us to realise the 
crowds and the life of the road in the eighteenth century. 

Of society in the Borough there is little information to be 
procured. The place had, however, its better class. One 
infers so much from the fact that there were Assembly Rooms 



IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 



26] 



in the High Street, and that a Borough Assembly was held 
during the winter on stated days, at which the fashion and 
aristocracy of the place were gathered together. I have 
gathered one anecdote alone concerning this Assembly. It 
is of an accident. 

The company were assembled : the Minuets had begun : 







the orchestra was in full play : the ladies were dressed in 
their finest : hoops were swinging : towering heads were 
nodding : the gentlemen were splendid in pale blue satin and 
in pink, when suddenly the doors, which stood on the level of 
the street, were pushed open, and a dozen oxen came running 
in otie after the other. The company parted right and left. 



262 SOUTH LONDON 

falling over benches and each other : the creatures, terrified 
by the light and the shrieks of the ladies, began to point 
threatening horns : nobody dared to drive them out till the 
'well-known' — the phrase is pathetic, because fame is so 
short-lived — the ' well-known ' Mrs. A. advanced, and with a 
brandishing of her apron and the magic of a * Shoo ! Shoo ! ' 
persuaded the animals to leave the place. Then who shall 
tell of the raising of fallen and fainting damsels ? Who shall 
speak of the rending of skirts and embroidered petticoats ? 
Who can describe the deplorable damage to the heads ? And 
who can adequately celebrate the gallantry of the men when 
there was no more danger ? Bowls of punch, I am pleased 
to record, were quickly administered as a restorative : and 
after certain necessary repairs to the heads and the sewing 
up of torn skirts, the wounded spirits of the company revived, 
and the ball proceeded. 

Another indication of society in Southwark is the fact 
that on one occasion — perhaps on more than one occasion — 
when the black footmen of London resolved on holding an 
Assembly of their own, it was in the Borough that they held 
it. And a very interesting evening it must have proved, had 
we any record of the proceedings. Perhaps black cooks were 
found to dance with black footmen. 

Since it contained the headquarters of so many stage 
coaches, carts and waggons, the High Street was bound to 
contain, as well, many houses of entertainment, if only as 
stables for the horses and accommodation for the drivers and 
grooms. The inns of Southwark, however, were far more 
ancient than the stage coaches. We have seen already that 
from the earliest times of trade the southern suburb was the 
place where merchants and those who brought produce of all 
kinds to London out of the south country put up their teams 
of pack-horses and their goods, and found bed and board and 
company for themselves. We have also seen how the inns of 
Southwark were used as gathering places and starting places 



IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 



263 



for the Pilgrims bound for St. Thomas's Shrine, Canterbury. 
The mediaeval inn was not much like that of later times. It con- 
tained a common hall and a common dormitory, with another 
for women. There was also a covered place for goods, and 




THE WHITE BEAR TAVERN, SOUTHWARK 

stables for horses. A small specimen of a fifteenth-century 
inn survives at Aylesbury : the hall, quite a small room, is 
very well preserved. That of the Tabard must have been much 
larger, in order to accommodate so large a company. The 
quaint old inns, so long the delight of the artist, now nearly 



264 SGLiTH LONDON 

all gone, were not earlier than the sixteenth or seventeenth 
century. They consisted of a large open courtyard filled 
with waggons and vehicles of all kinds, surrounded by 
galleries, at the back of which were bedrooms, and other 
chambers opening from the gallery. On the ground floor 
were the kitchens, dining-rooms, and private sitting-rooms. 
There was generally a large room for public dinners and 
other occasions.. The inns of Southwark formed, so long as 
they stood, the most picturesque part of modern Southwark. 
Scarcely anything now remains of them, the George alone pre- 
serving anything of its ancient picturesqueness. The reader 
who desires a closer acquaintance with these inns is referred to 
Mr Philip Norman's exquisitely illustrated book, which presents 
in a lasting form the vanished glories of the High Street. 

To speak of these inns is like entering upon a historical 
catalogue. There are so many of them, and the associations 
connected with them carry one away into so many directions 
and land him into many strange corners of history. 

At the south end of London Bridge, and on the west side 
of it, stood a tavern called the ' Bear at the Bridge Foot.' It 
was built in the year 13 19 by one Thomas Drinkwater, 
taverner of London. In Riley's ' Memorials ' may be found 
a lease of this house by the proprietor to one James Beauflur. 
The lease is for six years. James Beauflur is to pay no rent 
because he has advanced money to Thomas Drinkwater to 
help in tlfe building. James is, in fact, to act as manager of 
a ' tied ' house. Thomas Drinkwater will furnish all the wine, 
and will keep an exact account of the same and will have a 
settlement twice a year. Thomas will also complete the fur- 
niture of the house with ' hanaps,' that is, handled mugs of 
silver and of wood, with curtains, clothes, and everything else 
necessary for the proper conduct of a tavern. 

One hopes that James Beauflur made the tavern pay. 
This was the commencement of a long and singularly pros- 
perous inn. It became one of the most famous inns of 



IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 265 

London, and one of the most popular for dinners. Hither 
came the Churchwardens and vestry of St. Olave's to feast at 
the expense of the parish as long as feasts were allowed. Some 
of the bills of these dinners have been preserved among the 




ALLEN ROPEVVALK, SOUTHWARK 

papers of St. Saviour's. Rendle the antiquary and historian 
of Southwark gives one : 

P^ for 3 Geese, 3 Capons and one Rstbbit . 00 14 08 

3 Tarts 00 12 00 

a Giblett pie makyng . . . . 00 02 08 

^^^^^ 01 02 06 

3 leggs of mutton . . . . 00 8 00 
wine and dresing the meat and naperie, 

fire, bread and beere . . . 02 1 1 00 

18 oz Tobacco and 12 pipes . . 00 01 02 

12 Lemmonds and 18 Oranges . . 00 03 00 



05 15 00 



266 SOUTH LONDON 

Among the names of persons connected with the tavern 
must be noticed that of the Duke of Norfolk — 'Jockey of 
Norfolk ' — in 1463. Two hundred years later, one Cornelius 
Cooke, late a Colonel in Cromwell's army and a commis- 
sioner for the sale of the King's lands, enters upon a new 
sphere of usefulness by turning landlord of the Bear at the 
Bridge Foot. Samuel Pepys records several visits paid to the 
tavern. From this house the Duke of Richmond carried off 
Miss Stewart. It was pulled down in 1761, when the end of 
the bridge was widened. I need not catalogue the whole long 
list of the Southwark inns : you may find them all enumerated 
in Rendle's book, but mention may be made of the more 
important. Some of them, it will be seen, had been in more 
ancient times the town houses of great people — Bishops, 
Abbots and nobles. Other town houses, those off the high- 
way of trade, having been deserted by their former occu- 
pants, fell upon evil times, went down in the world, even be- 
came mere tenements. This happened to Sir John Fastolf 's 
house, and to the house of the Prior of Lewes, and to many 
others. Those standing in the highway, whither came all the 
merchants ; whither came all the waggons ; became trans- 
formed, and proved more valuable property as inns than as 
residences. 

Thus, in Foul Lane, now just south of St. Mary Overies, 
was the entrance to the Green Dragon Inn. This inn was 
anciently the town house of the Cobhams. This family left 
Southwark, and the house, with some alterations, became an 
Inn. When carriers began to ply between London and the 
country towns, Tunbridge was connected by a carrier's cart 
with the Green Dragon, Early in the eighteenth century it 
became the Southwark post-office. Another and a much 
more important inn for carriers and waggons was the King's 
Head. Taylor, the Water Poet, says that ' carriers come into 
the Borough of Southwark out of the counties of Kent, 
Sussex, and Surrey : from Reigate to the Falcon : from 



I 



IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 



267 



Tunbridge, Seavenoks, and Staplehurst to the Katharine 
Wheel, and others from Sussex thither ; Dorking and Ledder- 




A SOUTH LONDON SLUM 



268 



SOUTH LONDOxN 



head to the Greyhound : some to the Spunc, the George, the 
King's Head : some lodge at the Tabbard or Talbot : many, 
far and wide, are to be had almost daily at the White Hart.' 
The White Hart is, if possible, a more historical inn than 
Chaucer's Tabard itself. It was the headquarters of Jack 
Cade, as has already been related in chapter vi. In front of 
this inn one Hawarden was beheaded : and also in front of 
this inn the headless body of Lord Say, after being dragged 




THE OLD TABARD INN, SOUTHVVARK 



at the horsetail from the Standard at Chepe, was cut up in 
quarters, which were displayed in various places in order to 
strike terror into the minds of the people. 

I have spoken sufficiently of Chaucer already. The 
Tabard Inn, from which the famous Company set out, was 
named after the ornamented coat or jacket worn by Kings at 
Coronations, and by heralds, or even by ordinary persons. 
In the fourteenth century it was the town house of the Abbot 



IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 



269 



of Hyde, Winchester. Does this mean that the Abbot allowed 
the place to be used as an ordinary inn ? It is clear that 
Chaucer speaks of it as an ordinary inn. Yet in 1307 the 




ST. GEORGE, SOUTHWARK : NORTH-WEST VIEW 
{From an Engraving by B. Cole) 



270 SOUTH LONDON 

Bishop of Winchester licenses a chapel at the Abbot's Hos-> 
pitium in the Parish of St. Margaret, Southwark. At the; 
Dissolution it is surrendered as 'a hostelry called the Taberd,' 
the Abbot's place, the Abbot's stable, the garden belonging, 
a dung place leading to the ditch going to the Thames.' It; 
is explained in Spight's * Chaucer,' 1598, that the old Tabard 
had much decayed, but that it had been repaired ' with the 
Abbot's house adjoining.' Until the inn was finally pulleq 
dJDwn, a room used to be shown as that in which Chaucer'^ 
Company assembled. This, however, was not the roomj 
though it may have been rebuilt on the site of the old roomi 
For on Friday, May 26, 1676, a destructive fire broke out) 
\\(hich raged over a large part of the Borough and destroyed 
the Queen's Head, the Talbot, the George, the White Hart, 
the King's Head, the Green Dragon, the Borough Compter, 
the Meat Market, and about 500 houses. St. Thomas's Hos4 
pital was saved by a change of wind, which also seems tq 
have saved St. Mary Overies. ' 

Walk with me from the Bridge head southwards, noting 
the Inns first on the right or the west, and then on the left 
or east. \ 

We have, first, the Bear on Bridge Head : then, before 
getting to Ford Lane, the Bull's Head : opposite the market 
place, the Goat : next the Clement. Opposite St. George'^ 
Church we cross over, and are on the east side, going north 
again : here we have a succession of Inns : the Half Moon :; 
the Blue Maid and the Mermaid : the Nag's Head : the; 
Spur : the Christopher : the Cross Keys : the Tabard : the 
George : the White Hart : the King's Head : the Black 
Swan : the Boar's Head. There is a pleasing atmosphere 
of business mixed with festivity about this street of inns and 
courtyards : of stables and grooms : of drivers and guards : of 
coaches and waggons : of merchants and middlemen : of 
country squires come up on business, with the hope of com- 
bining a little pleasure amongst the excitements of the town 



IN THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 271 

with a profitable deal or two. There is the smell of roast 
meats hanging about the courtyards of the inns. There is a 
continual calling for the drawers, there is a clinking of 
hanaps and a murmur of voices. 

The strepitus, however, of the High Street is not like that 
of Bankside. There is no tinkling of guitars : no singing 
before noon or after noon : no laughing : the country folk do 
not laugh : they do not understand the wit of the poets and 
the players. High Street has nothing to do with Bankside : 
the merchants and the squires know nothing about the Show 
Folk. 

There was one exception. Among the Show Folk was a 
certain Edward Alleyn, who was a man of business as well 
as a conductor of entertainments. He was on the vestry of 
St. Saviour's : he was also churchwarden, his name appears in 
the parish accounts of the period. He was a popular church- 
warden : probably he had about him so much of the showman 
that he was genial, and mannerly, and courteous— these are the 
elementary virtues of the profession. For we find that when 
he proposes to retire his fellow members of the vestry refuse 
to let him go. 

It is melancholy to walk down the High Street and to 
reflect that all these inns, most of them so picturesque, were 
standing thirty or forty years ago, and that some of them 
were standing ten years ago. One of them is figured in the 
' Pickwick Papers.' The courtyard is too vast : the figures are 
too small : the galleries are too large : but the effect produced 
is admirable. Now not only are the old Inns gone, but there 
is nothing to take their place: a modern public-house is 
not an Inn. The need of an Inn at Southwark is gone : 
there are no more caravans of produce brought up to the 
Borough : the High Street has become the shop and the pro- 
vider of everything for the populations of the parishes of St. 
Saviour, St. Olave, St. Thomas, and St. George. 



272 SOUTH LONDON 



CHAPTER XV 

THE debtors' prison 

There was another kind of Sanctuary in Southwark, a place 
of Refuge not invited, and of security against one's will — The 
Debtors' Prison. In fact, there were three Debtors' Prisons — 
the King's Bench, the Marshalsea, and the Borough Compter. 
The consideration of these melancholy places — all the more 
melancholy because they were full of noisy revelry — fills 
one with amazement to think that a system so ridiculous 
should be continued so long, and should be abandoned with 
so much regret, reluctance, and with forebodings so gloomy. 
There would be no more credit, no more confidence, if the 
debtor could not be imprisoned. Trade would be destroyed. 
The Debtors' Prison was a part of trade. It is fifty years 
and more since the power of imprisoning a debtor for life 
was taken from the creditor : yet there is as much credit as 
ever, and as much confidence. To a trading community 
such as ours it seems, naturally, that the injury inflicted upon 
a merchant by failing to pay his just claims is so great that 
imprisonment ought to be awarded to such an offender. The 
Law gave the creditor the power of revenge full and terrible 
and lifelong. The Law said to the debtor : ' Whether you are 
to blame or not, you owe money which you cannot pay : you 
shall be locked up in a crowded prison : you shall be deprived 
of your means of getting a livelihood : you shall have no 
allowance of food : you shall have no fire : you shall have no 
bed : you shall be forced to herd with a noisome unwashed 
crowd of wretches : and whereas a criminal may get off with 



THE DEBTORS' PRISON 273 

a year or two, you shall be sentenced to life-long imprison- 
ment.' 

The barbarity of the system, its futility, because the 
debtor was deprived of the means of making money to pay 
his debts, withal, were exposed over and over again : prisoners 
wrote accounts of their prisons : commissions held inquiry 
into the management of the prisons : regulations were laid 
down : Acts were passed to release debtors by hundreds at one 
time : the system of allowing prisoners to live in ' Rules ' was 
tolerated : but the real evil remained untouched so long as a 




REMAINS OF THE MARSHALSEA : N.E. VIEW. A, CHAPEL ; B, PALACE COURT 
{From ' The Gentleman s Magazine,' September 1803) 

creditor had the power of imprisoning a debtor. The power 
was abused in the most monstrous manner : a man owed a 
few shillings : he could not pay : he was put into prison : the 
next day he discovered that he was in debt to an attorney 
for as many pounds. If he owed as much as lo/., the bill 
against him for his arrest amounted to 1 1/. 15^-. M. of what we 
should now call* taxed costs.' In the year 1759 there were 
20,000 prisoners for debt in Great Britain and Ireland. Think 
what that means : all those were in enforced idleness. Why, 
their work at 2s. a day means 600,000/. a year : all that wealth 

T 



274 SOUTH LONDON 

lost to the State : nay more, because they were mostly married 
men with families : their families had to be maintained, so 
that not only did the country lose 600,000/. a year by the 
idleness of the debtors, it also lost, that much again for the 
maintenance of their families. Put it in another way. A 
poor man knowing one trade which one cannot practise in a 
prison owed, say, i5j". He was arrested and put into prison. 
He lived there for thirty years. He lived on doles and the 
proceeds of the begging box, and what his friends could give 
him : he lived, say, on five shillings a week. He cost some one 
therefore ; the charitable people who dropped money into the 
box ; the community ; for his maintenance in the prison^ and 
for thirty years of it, the sum total of 400/. This is rather 
an expensive tax on the State : but the tradesman to whom 
he owed the money considered no more than his own 15^. In 
addition there were his wife and children to keep until the 
latter were self-supporting. This charge represented perhaps 
another 400/. But there were 20,000 debtors in prison. If 
they were all in like evil case, the State was taxed on their 
behalf in the sum of sixteen millions spread over thirty 
years, or half a million a year, because these luckless creatures 
could not pay an insignificant debt of a few shillings or a few 
pounds. 

The King's Bench was the largest of all the Debtors' 
Prisons. It formerly stood on the east side of the High 
Street, on the site of what is now the second street north of 
St. George's Church. This prison was taken down in 1758, 
and the Debtors were removed to a larger and much more 
commodious place on the other side of the street south of 
Lant Street — the site is now marked by a number of new 
and very ugly houses and mean streets. When it was built 
it looked out at the back of St. George's Fields ^nd across 
Lambeth Marsh, then an open space, and by this time 
drained. But the good air without was fully balanced by the 
bad air within. 



THE DEBTORS' PRISON 



275 



The place was surrounded by a very high wall, the area 
covered was extensive, and the buildings were more com- 
modious than had ever before been attempted in a prison. 
But they were not large enough. In the year 1776 the 
prisoners had to lie two in a bed, and even for those who 
could pay there were not beds enough, and many slept on 
the floor of the chapel. There were 395 prisoners: in addi- 
tion to the prisoners many of them had wives and children 
with them. There were 279 wives and 725 children : a total 
of 1,399 sleeping every night in the prison. There was a 




king's bench prison 

good water supply, but there was no infirmary, no resident 
surgeon, and no bath. Imagine a place containing 1,399 
persons, and no bath and no infirmary ! 

Among these prisoners, about a hundred years ago, was a 
certain Colonel Hanger, who has left his memoirs behind 
him for the edification of posterity. According to him, the 
prison ' rivalled the purlieus of Wapping, St. Giles, and St. 
James's in vice, debauchery, and drunkenness.' The general 
immorality was so great that it was only possible, he says, 
to escape contagion by living separate or by consorting 

T2 



276 SOUTH LONDON 

only with the few gentlemen of honour who might be 
found there : * otherwise a man will quickly sink into dis- 
sipation : he will lose every sense of honour and dignity : 
every moral principle and virtuous disposition.' Among 
the prisoners in Hanger's time, there were seldom fifty 
who had any regular means of sustenance. They were 
always underfed. At that time a detaining creditor had to 
find sixpence a day for the prisoner's support. But in 1798 
a pound of bread cost 4|<^., a pint of porter 2d. : therefore a 
man who had to live on 6(i. a day could not get more than a 
pound of bread and a half pint of porter. x'\nd then the 6d, 
a day was constantly withheld on some pretence or another, 
and the poor prisoner had not the wherewithal to engage an 
attorney to secure his rights. And as for attorneys their 
name stank in the prison : more than half of the prisoners, 
Hanger avers, were kept there solely because they could 
not pay the attorneys' costs. 

Those prisoners who knew any trade which could be 
carried on in the King's Bench were fortunate. The cobbler, 
the tailor, the barber, the fiddler, the carpenter, could get em- 
ployment and were able to maintain themselves : some of 
them kept shops, and the principal building in the place, 
about 360 feet long, had its ground floor, looking out upon 
an open court, occupied by shops where everything could 
be bought except spirits,* which were forbidden. They were 
brought in, however, secretly by the visitors. The open court 
was the common Recreation Ground : there was the Parade, a 
Walk along the front of the buUding : three pumps where were 
benches : these were three separate centres of conversation : 
there were racket and fives courts : a ground for the play 
called * bumble puppy.' And in fine weather there were 
tables set out here and there, with chairs and benches, where 
the collegians drank beer and smoked tobacco. 

Anybody might enter the Prison to visit an inmate or to 
look round : every day the place was thronged with visitors, 



THE DEBTORS' PRISON 



277 



chiefly to see the new comers : the time came when the new- 
comer was an old resident, who had worn out the kindness of 
his friends or had outlived them, and now lingered on, poor 
and friendless, in this living grave. All day long the children 
played in the court, shouting and running : they saw things 
that they ought not to have seen : they heard things which 




they ought not to have heard : they learned habits which 
they ought not to have learned. Can one conceive a worse 
school for a boy than the King's Bench Prison ? Look at the 
Court on a fine and sunny afternoon. The whole College is 
out and in the open : some stroll up and down : in the Prison 
nobody ever walks : they all stroll : even, it may be said with- 



27% SOUTH LONDON 

out unkindness, they slouch. The men wear coats which are 
mostly in holes at the elbows, with other garments that 
equally show signs of decay : they wear slippers because it 
is absurd to wear boots in a prise n : the slippers are down at 
heel — never mind : no one cares here whether one is shabby 
or not : it is better to go ragged than to go hungry. If the 
men are ragged the women are slatternly : they have lost 
even the feminine desire to please : they please nobody, 
and certainly not their husbands : they are shrewish as to 
tongue and vicious as to temper. Look at their faces : there 
is this face and that face, but there is not a single happy face 
among them all. The average face is resentful, painted with 
strong drink, stamped with the seal of vice and self-indul- 
gence. A vile place, which has imprinted its own vileness 
on the face of everyone who lives within its walls. 

A worse place than the King's Bench was a wretched 
little Prison called the Borough Compter. It was used both 
for debtors and for criminals. Now you shall hear what 
marv^ellous thing in the way of cruelty can be brought about 
when the execution of the law is entrusted to such men as 
prison warders and turnkeys. 

The place consisted of a women's ward, a debtors' ward, a 
felons' ward, and a yard for exercise. The yard was nineteen 
feet square : this was the only exercising ground for all the 
prisoners. When Buxton visited the place in the year 1817, 
there were then thirty-eight debtors, thirty women, and twenty 
children — all had to exercise themselves in this little yard : 
he does not say how many felons there were. The debtors' 
ward consisted of two rooms, each of which was twenty feet 
long and about nine feet broad. Each room was furnished 
with eight straw beds, sixteen rugs, and a piece of timber for 
a pillow. Twenty prisoners slept side by side on these beds! 
That gives a breadth of twelve inches for each. No one 
therefore could move in bed. The place was shut up : in the 
morning the heat and stench were so awful that when the 



THE DEBTORS' PRISON 279 

door was opened all rushed together, undressed as they were, 
into the yard for fresh air. Now and then a man would be 
brought in with an infectious disease or covered with vermin : 
they had to endure his company as best they could. There 
was no infirmary : no surgeon : no conveniences whatever in 
case of sickness. And the place was so crowded that those 
who mig-ht have carried on their trade could not for want of 
space. As for the women's ward, I forbear to speak. Think, 
however, of the noisome, horrible, stinking place, narrow and 
confined, with its felons' ward of innocent and guilty, tried 
and untried : the past masters in villainy with the innocent 
country boy : the honest working man with his wife and 
children slowly starving and slowly poisoned by the brutal law 
which permitted a creditor to send him there for life for a paltry 
debt of a few shillings. Think of the simple-minded country girl 
thrust into the women's ward, where wickedness was authorised, 
where nothing was disguised ! I sometimes ask whether in the 
year 1998 the historian of manners will call attention to the 
lamentable brutality of this the end of the nineteenth century. 
There are some points as to which I am doubtful. But I can- 
not believe that there will be anything alleged against us 
compared with the sleek complacency with which the City 
Fathers and the Legislators regarded the condition of the 
Debtors' Pri<5ons. 

I have not forgotten the Marshalsea. The position of 
the Marshalsea Prison was changed from its first site south of 
King Street in the year 18 10, when it was removed to the 
site which it occupied down to the end, overlooking St. 
George's Churchyard. The choice of that site is a good 
illustration of English conservatism. Why was the Marshal- 
sea brought there ? Because there had been a prison on the 
spot before. From time immemorial the Surrey Prison had 
stood there. They called the place the White Lyon. It still 
stood when the Marshalsea was brought there : it was still 
standing when the Marshalsea was pulled down. 



28o SOUTH LONDON 

I think it was in the year 1 877 or 1 878 or thereabouts that 1 
walked over to see the Marshalsea before it was pulled down. 
I found a long narrow terrace of mean houses- they are still 
standing : there was a narrow courtyard in front for exercise 
and air :a high wall separated the prison from the Churchyard : 
the rooms in the terrace were filled with deep cupboards on 
either side of the fireplace : these cupboards contained the 
coals, the cooking utensils, the stores, and the clothes of the 
occupants. My guide, a working man employed on the 
demolition of another part of the . Prison, pointed to certain 
marks on the floor as, he said, the place where they fastened 
the staples when they tied down the poor prisoners. Such 
was his historic information : he also pointed out Mr. Dorrit's 
room — so real was the novelist's creation. At the east end 
of the terrace there were certain rooms which I believe to 
have been the tap-room and the coffee-room. Then we 
came to the White Lyon, which at the time I did not know to 
have been the White Lyon. It was a very ancient building. 
It consisted of two rooms, one above the other : the staircase 
and the floors were of most solid work : the windows were 
barred : bars crossed the chimney a few feet up : large square 
nails were driven into the oaken pillars and into the door.s. 
The lower room had evidently been kitchen, day room, 
sleeping room and all. Outside was a tiny yard for exer- 
cise : this was the old Surrey Prison. I have seen another 
prison exactly like it, and, if my memory does not play 
tricks, it was at the little country town of Ilminster. This 
was a Clink, and on this pattern, I believe, all the old Prisons 
were constructed. Beyond the Clink was the chapel, a 
modern structure. So far as I know, Mr. Dickens pere, and 
Mr. Dorrit, were the only persons of eminence confined in 
this modern Marshalsea. In the older Marshalsea all kinds of 
distinguished people were kept captive, notably Bishop Bonner, 
who died there. They say that it was necessary to bury him at 
midnight for fear of the people, who would have rent his dead 



THE DEBTORS' PRISON 281 

body in pieces if they could. Perhaps. But it was not at any 
time usual for a mob of Englishmen to pull a dead body, even 
of a martyr-making Marian Bishop, to pieces. Later on, in 
the last century, it was the rule to bury at night. The dark- 
ness, the flicker of the torches, increased the solemnity of the 
ceremony. So that after all Bishop Bonner may have been 
buried at night in the usual fashion. He lies buried some- 
where in St. George's Churchyard. It is now a pretty garden, 
whose benches in fine weather are filled with people resting and 
sunning themselves : in spring the garden is full of pleasant 
greenery : the dead parishioners to whom headstones have been 
consecrated, if they ever visit the spot, may amuse themselves 
by picking out their own tombstones among the illegible ones 
which line the wall. But I hardly think, wherever they may 
now be quartered, they would care to revisit this place. The 
owners of the headstones were in their day accounted as the 
more fortunate sons of men : they were vestrymen and guardians 
and churchwardens : they owned shops : they kept the inns and 
ran the stage coaches and the waggons and the caravans : their 
tills were heavy with guineas : their faces were smug and 
smiling : their chins were double : they talked benevolent com- 
monplace : they exchanged the most beautiful sentiments : 
and they crammed their debtors into these prisons. 

There are other tenants of this small area : they belonged 
to the great army— how great ! how vast ! how rapidly in- 
creasing !— of the ' Not-quite-so-fortunate.' They were brought 
here from the King's Bench and the Marshalsea : they came 
from the Master's side and from the Common side. They 
came here from the mean streets and lanes of the Borough : 
they were the porters and the fishermen and the rogues and 
the grooms and the ' service ' generally. This churchyard 
represents all that can be imagined of human patience, human 
work, human suffering, human degradation. Everything is here 
beneath our feet, and we sit among these memories unmoved 
and enjoy the sunshine and forget the sorrows of the past. 



282 SOUTH LONDON 



CHAPTER XVI 

THE PLEASURE GARDENS 

It is somewhat remarkable that two books should have 
appeared almost at the same time on the Pleasure Gardens of 
London — that of Messrs. Warwick and Edgar Wroth, and that 
of Mr. H. A. Rogers. I refer the reader who desires exact 
and special knowledge on the subject to these two books. 
For my own part I have only to speak of two or three of 
these gardens, and shall confine myself to certain sources of 
information neither so exact nor so detailed as those from 
■'hich Messrs. Warwick and Wroth have drawn the material 
.or their excellent work. 

The Pleasure Gardens grew out of the old Bear Baiting 
Gardens The London citizen loved sport first and above all 
things : next, he loved the country : to sit under the shade of 
trees in the summer : to walk upon the soft sward ; to smell the 
flowers : to rest his eyes upon country scenes. He has always 
yearned for the country while he remained in town. With 
these things he desired, as a concomitant of the entertainment, 
good eating, good drinking, the merry sound of music not softly 
but loudly played : the voices of those who sang : and a plat- 
form or floor for dancing. All these things he could get in 
Paris Gardens so long as that place existed, together with its 
bears and dogs. When the bears disappeared, what followed ? 
The Gardens continued without the bears. There were also 
the Mulberry Gardens on the site of Buckingham House, and 
the Spring Gardens at Charing Cross. In the month of July 
1 66 1 Evelyn visited the new garden of Foxhall, afterwards 



■/ 



,« J* 



h^. 



m 






284 ^' SOUTH LONDON 

Vauxhall, and in June 1665, the year of the Plagu^, Pepys 
spent the evening at the same place, for the first time, and 
with great delight. 

The Pleasure Garden apart from the sport of Bear and 
Bull Baiting was then beginning. Before long it became a 
necessity of life — at least, of the gregarious and social life 
of which the eighteenth century was so fond. Many things 
are said about that century, now so nearly removed from us 
by the space of another century, but we cannot say that it 
was not social, and that it was not gregarious. It had its 
coffee houses : its clubs : its taverns : its coteriel. : its societies : 
it loved the theatre : the opera : the concert : the oratorio : the 
masquerade : the Assembly : the card-room : but most of all 
the eighteenth century loved its Pleasure Gardens. It took 
every opportunity of getting away from the quiet house to 
crowds and noise and the scene of merriment. 

Many things were required to make a Pleasure Garden. 
There must be, first, abundance of trees — at first cherry trees, 
but these afterwards disappeared : if possible, there should be 
avenues of trees : aisles and dark walks of trees. There must 
be, next, an ornamental water with a fountain and a bridge : 
there must be a row of rustic bowers or retreats in which tea 
and supper could be served : there must be a platform for 
open-air dancing and promenading : there must be card-rooms : 
there must be a long room for dancing and for promenading, 
with a gallery for the orchestra and the singers. Add to these 
things a crowd every night including all classes and conditions 
of men and women. The eighteenth century was by no 
means a leveller of distinctions, but all classes met together 
without levelling. Distinctions were preserved : each party 
kept to itself : the nobleman wore his star and sash : he did not 
pretend to be on a: level with the people around him : they 
liked him to keep up the dignity of aristocratic separation : he 
brought Ladies to the Gardens, sometimes in domino, sometimes 
not. Xli^y were not expected to speak to the ladies outside 



THE PLEASURE GARDENS 



28': 



their set: they danced together in the minuets: after the 
minuets they withdrew. The main point about the company 
of the Gardens was that each party was separate and kept 
separate. In the Park, either in the morning or the afternoon, 




VAUXHALL JUBILEE ADMISSION TICKET 

it was not difficult to make acquaintances. The reason was 
that in the Park were only to be found in the morning or the 
afternoon those people who were not engaged in earning their 
livelihood. Accordingly, all professional men— lawyers, physi- 



286 SOUTH LONDON 

cians, attorneys, surgeons, artists, architects, literary people : 
all those engaged in trade, from the greatest merchant to the 
smallest shopkeeper, were excluded : they were occupied else- 
where. Therefore, the servants and footmen not being 
allowed in the Park, but compelled to wait outside, the people 
of position had the place to themselves, and access was easy. 
In the Gardens it was different : all could enter who paid the 
shilling for an entrance fee. Among them were the gentle- 
men in the red coat who bore His Majesty's Commission : the 
young fellows about town, a noisy disreputable band with 
noisy and disreputable companions : the plain citizen with his 
wife and daughter, the young fellow who was courting her : 
the young tradesman taking a holiday for once : the high- 
wayman : the common pickpocket, and whole troops of the 
customary courtesan. All were here enjoying together — but 
separated into tiny groups of two or three — the strings of 
coloured lamps, the blare of the orchestra, the songs, the 
dances, and the supper. As for the last, it seems to have 
been always a cold collation : it generally consisted of chicken 
and a thin slice of ham, with a bowl of punch and a bottle of 
Port. There was no affectation of fine or polite behaviour ; 
everybody behaved exactly as he pleased : the citizen was 
not gene by the presence of the great lady : he prattled his 
vulgar commonplaces without being abashed : nor did the 
great lady put on ' side,' or behave among her own company 
with any affectation of dignity or reserve in the presence of 
the mercer of Ludgate Hill in the next box. Perhaps the 
recognition of rank made them all behave more naturally. 
After all, the mercer had his own rank. He could look 
forward to becoming Alderman, Sheriff, and Lord Mayor : he 
understood very well that he was already a good way up the 
ladder : the social precedence which belongs to the possession 
of money and the employment of many servants had already 
placed him in front of a vast crowd of inferiors : he was per- 
fectly satisfied with his own position, although he could cer- 



THE PLEASURE GARDENS 287 

tainly never become a noble earl or wear a star upon his 
breast, or hope to consort on equal terms with the jewelled 
lady in silks which he knew (professionally) to be beyond all 
price, with her routed face and high-dressed head, who laughed 
so loud and talked so fast with the noble lords her com- 
panions, one of whom was blind drunk and the other was a 
little mincing beau who walked on his toes with bent knees and 
carried his hat under his arm, and spoke under his breath as 
if every word was to be listened to. Do you think the honest 
mercer was indignant at the manners of the great? Not he : he 
called for another bo a^I of punch and tied his handkerchief over 
his wig to keep off the damp. In the box on the other side 
of the citizen from Ludgate Hill was a party also taking 
supper and punch, with plenty of the latter. They were 
under the lead of an extremely fine gentleman : his white 
coat was covered with gold lace : his hat was laced in the 
same way : his waistcoat was of flowered silk : his ruffles were 
of white lace — lace of Valenciennes. The ladies with him 
were dressed with a corresponding splendour. Everybody 
knew that the gentleman was a highwayman : his face was 
perfectly well known : he had been going on so long that his 
time must soon be up. In a few months at most he would 
take that fatal journey in the cart to Tyburn, there to meet 
the end common to his kind. A good many people in the 
Gardens knew, besides, that the ladies with him — ladies of St. 
Giles in the Fields — were dressed from the stores of a receiving 
house for stolen goods. Perhaps the consciousness of this cheap 
and easy way of getting one's clothes made the ladies so 
buoyantly and extravagantly happy, with their sprightly 
sallies and their high-bred courtesy of adjectives. But the 
mercer troubled himself not at all about them. 

The toleration of the mercer ought to endear his memory 
to us. For in all public assemblies there are things which 
must be tolerated. Less wise, we shut up the Assembly. 
We cannot keep out the Lady of the Camellias from the 



288 SOUTH LONDON 

Pleasure Garden. Therefore we shut up the place. In the 
eighteenth century this lady was told that everybody must 
behave with a certain amount of restraint : we have improved 
upon that manner : we cut off our nose to spite our face : we 
shut up the lovely Garden because we cannot keep her out 

For the same reason we have practically forbidden the 
youth of the lower middle class to practise the laudable, 
innocent, and delightful diversion of dancing. Not a single 
place, except certain so-called clubs, where the young people 
can now go to dance. Why ? Because the magistrates in 
their wisdom have concluded that vice free and unchecked 
out of doors is better for the people than vice fettered and 
restrained by the necessity of beha^^ing decently, and com- 
pelled to hide itself under the semblance of virtue. The 
Pleasure Gardens were shut up one after the other for that 
reason. When will they return ? And in what form ? 

The Gardens of South London were not so celebrated as 
those of the North. Against Ranelagh, Cremorne, Marylebone, 
Bagnigge Wells, the White Conduit House — the South can 
only point to Vauxhall as a national institution. They were, 
however, of considerable note in their time, and were greatly 
frequented. They lay in a half circle, like pearls on a chain, 
all round South London. There were the Lambeth Wells, 
the Marble Hall, and the Cumberland Gardens at Vauxhall, 
besides Vauxhall itself ; the Black Prince, Newington Butts ; 
the Temple of Flora, the Temple of Apollo, the Flora Tea 
Gardens, the Restoration Spring Gardens, the Dog and Duck, 
the Folly on the Thames ; Cuper's Gardens ; Finch's Grotto, 
the Bermondsey Spa, and St. Helena Gardens, Rotherhithe. 
No doubt there were others, but these were the principal 
Gardens. 

Cuper's Gardens lay exactly opposite to Somerset House. 
When Waterloo Bridge and Waterloo Bridge Road were 
constructed the latter passed right through the former site of 
the Gardens. St. John's Church marks the southern limit of 



THE PLEASURE GARDENS 



289 



the Gardens. They were opened about the year 1678 by one 
Cuper, gardener to the Earl of Arundel. He begged such of 
the statues belonging to his master as were mutilated, and 
decorated the new gardens with them. Aubrey mentions 
them as belonging to Jesus College, Oxford ; he calls them 
Cupid's gardens, and speaks of the arbours and walks of the 
place. There was a tavern connected with the gardens by 
the riverside, and fireworks were exhibited. These gardens 
continued until 1753, when they were suppressed as a 




THE DOG AND DUCK, BETHLEM 

nuisance. Cunningham quotes the prologue to Mrs. Centlivre's 
* Busy Body.' 

The Fleet Street sempstress, toast of Temple sparks, 
That runs spruce neckcloths for attorneys' clerks, 
At Cupid's Gardens will her hours regale. 
Sing ' Fair Dorinda,' and drink bottled ale. 

In the 'Sunday Ramble' (1794) the Dog and Duck is 
one of the last places visited in the course of that very 
remarkable Sunday ' out,' which began at four o'clock in the 
morning and ended at one o'clock next morning, such was 
the zeal of the ramblers. The place was a tavern in St 

u 



290 SOUTH LONDON 

George's Fields. On its site now stands Bethlehem Hos- 
pital. It was first built for the accommodation of those who 
came to this spot in order to drink the waters of a spring 
supposed to possess wonderful properties, especially in the 
case of cutaneous disorders and scrofula. The spring, like 
so many other medicinal springs, has long since been for- 
gotten. Where is Beulah Spa ? Who remembereth 
Hampstead Spa ? Yet in its day the spring in St. George's 
Wells had no small reputation. It was especially in vogue 
between 1744 and 1770. Dr. Johnson advised Mrs. Thrale'to 
try it. When the Spa declined, the tavern looked out for 
other attractions ; it found them by day in certain ponds on 
the Fields close to the tavern : these ponds especially on Sun- 
day were used for the magnificent sport of hunting the duck 
by dogs. All the ponds around London, especially those 
lying on the east side of Tottenham Court Road, were used 
for this sport. The gallant sportsmen, their hunt over, 
naturally felt thirsty : they were easily persuaded to stay for 
the evening when on week days there was music, with 
dancing, singing, supper, and more drink, and on Sundays 
the organ, with a choice company of the most well-bred gentle- 
men and ladies of similar breeding and taste. 

Like Ranelagh and Bagnigge Wells, and indeed all the 
Pleasure Gardens, the Dog and Duck was a favourite place 
for breakfasts. The fashion of the public breakfast, now so 
completely forgotten, was brought to London from Bath, 
Tunbridge Wells, and Epsom. Tea and coffee were served 
at breakfast. After breakfast the people stayed on at the 
gardens, very often all day and half the night at the Dog and 
Duck. There was a bowling green for fine weather, there 
was also a swimming bath — I believe, the only one south of 
the Thames. About three or four in the afternoon there was 
dinner, with a bottle or several bottles of wine. One of the 
ponds not then employed for duck-hunting was in the gar- 
den, and served as an ornamental water, with alcoves or 



THE PLEASURE GARDENS 291 

bowers round it ; a band played at intervals during the day. 
In the long room there was an organ, with an excellent 
organist In the evening, there was generally a concert ; the 
Dog and Duck maintained its own poet and its own com- 
poser. All this sounds very innocent and Arcadian, but in 
truth the place was acquiring a most evil reputation. In 
1787 it was closed on Sunday, and in 1799 it was suppressed. 
In the * Sunday Ramble ' (1794) the Dog and Duck is open, 
but the Ramble may have taken place before 1787. Let us 
see what is going on. Remember that it is Sunday evening. 
But there is not the least trace of any respect for the day, 
and the place — to speak the truth — is full of the vilest 
company in the worlcl, whose histories are described in the 
greedy fulness and with the hypocritical indignation against 
the wickedness of the people which were common among 
such writers a hundred years ago. I suppose they would 
not venture to set down what they did, but for the pretence 
of indignation. Thus, there is a certain City merchant, once 
a Quaker and formerly a bankrupt, but now rich and 
flourishing again. His companion is an ex-orange-girl, 
his mistress. Observe that the writer is certainly airing 
some City scandal of the day, and that his readers know 
perfectly well who was meant. There is a certain Nan 
Sheldon, who seems to have been a lady of some conversa- 
tional powers with a considerable fund of information about 
the shady side of town life. There is also present a young 

lady described as the mistress of the ' Rev. Dr. D s, of St. 

G.' Here, no doubt, we have apiece of contemporary humour 
which enables us to have a slap at the Church. There is 
other company of the like kind, but this specimen must 
suffice. As to the men, they are chiefly 'prentices and shop- 
men. At the Dog and Duck the license to sell drink had 
been withdrawn. The manager, however, met the difficulty 
by engaging a free vintner, i.e. a member of the Vintners' 



292 SOUTH LONDON 

Company, for whom no license was required. He therefore 
came to sell the drink to the visitors. It is a curious illus- 
tration of City privileges. Leaving the Dog and Duck, the 
Ramblers visited the Temple of Flora, dropped a tear over 
the Apollo Gardens, deserted and falling into ruins, and 
visited the Flora Tea Garden. The company here was more 
respectable, in consequence of some separation among the 
ladies ; it was not, however, very orderly, and political argu- 
ment ran high. 

From this Tea Garden they drove to the Bermondsey Spa 
Gardens. Let me extract this account of this place, which 
was once so popular : 

' We found the entrance presents a vista between trees, 
hung with lamps, blue, red, green, and white ; nor is the walk 
in which they are hung inferior (length excepted) to the grand 
walk in Vauxhall Gardens. Nearly at the upper end of the 
walk is a large room, hung round with paintings, many of 
them in an elegant and the rest in a singular taste. At the 
upper end of the room is a painting of a butcher's shop, so 
finely executed by the landlord that a stranger to the place 
would cheapen a fillet of veal or a buttock of beef, a shoulder 
of mutton or a leg of pork, without hesitation, if there were 
not other pictures in the room to take off his attention. But 
these paintings are not seen on a Sunday. 

* The accommodations at this place on a Sunday are very 
good, and the charges reasonable, and the captain, who is 
very intimate with Mr. Keyse, declares that there is no place 
in the vicinity of London can afford a more agreeable evening's 
entertainment. 

' This elegant place of entertainment is situate in the 
lower road, between the Borough of Southwark and Deptford. 
The proprietor calls it one, but it is nearer two miles from 
London Bridge, and the same distance from that of Black- 
Friars. The proprietor is Mr. Thomas Keyse, who has been 
at great expense, and exerted himself in a very extraordinary 



THE PLEASURE GARDENS 293 

manner, for the entertainment of the public ; and his labours 
have been amply repaid. 

' It is easy to paint the elegance of this place, situated in 
a spot where elegance, among people who talk of taste^ would 
be little expected. But Mr. Keyse's good humour, his un- 
affected easiness of behaviour, and his genuine taste for the 
polite arts, have secured him universal approbation. 

' The gardens, with an adjacent field, consist of not less 
than four acres. 

* On the north-east side of the gardens is a very fine lawn, 
consisting of about three acres, and in a field, parted from 
this lawn by a sunk fence, is a building with turrets, resem- 
bling a fortress, or castle. The turrets are in the ancient style 
of building. At each side of this fortress, at unequal distances, 
are two buildings, from which, on public nights, bomb shells, 
&c., are thrown at the fortress ; the fire is returned, and the 
whole exhibits a very picturesque, and therefore a horrid, 
prospect of a siege. 

' After walking a round or two in the gardens we retired 
into the parlour, where we were very agreeably entertained 
by the proprietor, who, contrary to his own rule, favoured us 
with a sight of his curious museum, for, it being Sunday, he 
never shows to any one these articles ; but, the captain never 
having seen them, I wished him to be gratified with such an 
agreeable sight. 

' Mr. Keyse presented us with a little pamphlet, written 
by the late celebrated John Oakman, of lyric memory, de- 
scriptive of his situation, which a few years ago was but a 
waste piece of ground. " Here is now," said he, " an agreeable 
place, where before was but a mere wilderness piece of ground, 
and, in my opinion, it was a better plan to lay it out in this 
manner than any other wise, as the remoteness of any place 
of public entertainment from this secured to me in mj retreat 
a comfortable piece of livelihood." 

' We perfectly coincided in opinion with our worthy host, 



294 SOUTH LONDON 

and, after paying for our liquor, got into our carriage, but not 
before we had tasted a comfortable glass of cherry brandy, for 
which Mr. Keyse is remarkable for preparing.' 

I am not here writing a history of South London. Were 
this a history, Vauxhall Gardens would demand its own place, 
and a very large place. A garden which continued to be a 
favourite resort from the year 1660 or thereabouts until the 
year 1859, when it was finally abandoned, which occupies so 
large a part in the literature of that long period, must have 
its history told in length when a history is written of the 
place where it stood. In this place I desire to do no 
more than to take off my hat to this Queen of Gardens, and 
to recognise her importance. The history of Vauxhall is an 
old story ; it has been told at greater or less length, over and 
over again. We seem to know all the anecdotes which have 
been copied from one writer by another, and all the literature 
and all the poetry about Vauxhall. The poetry is, indeed, 
very poor stuff. The best are the lines of Canning : 

There oft returning from the green retreats 

Where fair Vauxhallia decks her sylvan seats ; 

Where each spruce nymph, from City counters free, 

Sips the frothed syllabub or fragrant tea : 

While with sliced ham, scraped beef, and burnt champagne, 

Her 'prentice lover soothes his amorous pain. 

What a chain of anecdotes it is ! We begin in 1661 with 
Evelyn, who treats the place with his accustomed brevity and 
coldness ; we go on to Pepys, who records how the visitors 
picked cherries, and how the nightingales sang, and lets us 
understand how much he enjoyed his visits there, and how 
delightful he found the place, and how much after his own 
heart ; we proceed to Congreve and Tom Brown, to Addison, 
to Fielding, to Horace Walpole. We all know the Dark 
Walk, and how the ladies were taken there, not unwillingly, 
to be frightened : we know the stage where they danced : we 



THE PLEASURE GARDENS 295 

know the orchestra ; we know the Chinese Room . we know 
Rowlandson's picture of the evening at Vauxhall with the 
Prince of Wales, putting on princely arrogance in the 
middle, and the Duchess of Devonshire and her friends 
apparently making fun of him ; and in the side box, having 
supper, Goldsmith and Boswell, and Mrs. Traill, and Dr. 
Johnson ; with Miss Linley singing ; and we all know about 
the forty thousand coloured lamps festooned about the trees. 

London was not London, life was not worth having, 
without Vauxhall. Like Mrs. Cornelys's masquerades and 
assemblies, Vauxhall was the great leveller of the eighteenth 
century. A man might be an earl or a prince : he would get 
no more enjoyment out of Vauxhall than a 'prentice who 
had a little money to spare. And the milliner going to 
Vauxhall with that 'prentice was quite as happy as any lady 
in the land could be. 

When one thinks of Vauxhall and all it meant, one is 
carried away by admiration. To the City Miss who might 
belong to the City Assembly, but most likely did not, there 
was no such spectacle in the world as those avenues of trees 
with their thousands of coloured lamps ; there was nothing 
that so much made her heart leap up as the sight of the 
dancing in the open air to the music of the orchestra in the 
high stand ; there was nothing so delightful as to sit in an 
arbour dimly lighted, and to make a supper off cold chicken 
with a glass of punch afterwards— girls drank punch then — 
to look out upon the company, resplendent, men and women 
alikt, in their dress, and ceremonious in their manners ; to be 
told how the one was the young Lord Mellamour and the 
angel with him was a danseuse of Covent Garden : and that 
other gentleman behind them was the Rev. Dr. Scattertext 
of St. Bride's ; and that the dashing young fellow in peach- 
coloured velvet was no other than Sixteen String Jack the 
highwayman. Vauxhall, in fact, for two hundred years, was 
nothing less than a national institution. All classes who could 



296 SOUTH LONDON 

command a decent coat went to Vauxhall. The Prince of 
Wales went there— once or twice he was recognised and 
mobbed ; all the great ladies went there ; all the lesser ladies ; 
all the ladies of the half world ; all the citizens, from the 
Alderman to the 'prentice ; all the adventurers ; all the 
gallant highwaymen. There was a charming toleration about 
the visitors to Vauxhall. They were not in the least dis- 
turbed by the presence of the highwaymen, of the adven- 
turers, or of the ladies corresponding to those gentlemen — 
not in the least ; they walked together in the lanes and aisles 
of the place ; they ate supper in the next arbour ; they saw 
the young rakes carrying on openly and without the least 
disguise. The sober citizen saw it ; his sober wife saw it ; her 
daughter saw it. There were no complaints, save occasionally 
from the Surrey magistrates. The place and the behaviour 
of the people are typical of the eighteenth century, in which 
the maintenance of order was thrown upon the public, and 
there were no police. If things got very bad in a pleasure 
garden, the magistrates refused a license ; if the visitors were 
robbed by highwaymen on their way to and from the place, 
guards were appointed by the managers. Vauxhall, however, 
was safer than most places, because most of the people came 
by boat. In common with all places of amusement in the 
eighteenth century, Vauxhall was late. The people seem to 
have been allowed to stay there nearly all night. 

There is a passage quoted in Chambers's ' Book of Days,' 
which I should like to transfer with acknowledgments to this 
page. It is from the 'Connoisseur' of 1755, and discusses a 
Vauxhall slice of ham. 

' When it was brought, our honest friend twirled the dish 
about three or four times, and surveyed it with a settled 
countenance. Then taking up a slice of the ham on the 
point of his fork, and dangling it to and fro, he asked the 
waiter how much there was of it. " A shilling's worth, sir," 
said the fellow. " Prithee," said the tit, " how much dost 



THE PLEASURE GARDENS 297 

think it weighs ? " " An ounce, sir." " Ah ! a shilHng an 
ounce, that is sixteen shilhngs per pound ; a reasonable 
profit, truly ! Let me see. Suppose, now, the whole ham 
weighs thirty pounds : at a shilling per ounce, that is six- 
teen shillings per pound. Why, your master makes exactly 
twenty-four pounds off of every ham ; and if he buys them 
at the best hand, and salts and cures them himself, they don't 
stand him in ten shillings a-piece ! " ' 

In 1 84 1 there seemed every prospect that the gardens 
would be closed ; they were not closed, however, but were 
reopened and continued open until the year 1859, when they 
were finally closed and the farewell night was celebrated. 

The scare, however, in 1841 produced in June a brief 
history of Vauxhall Gardens in one of the morning papers — 
I do not know which — I have it as a cutting only. It is as 
follows : 

' Vauxhall Gardens are announced for public sale under 
Gye and Hughes's bankruptcy, and their past celebrity de- 
serves a notice, if only as a memento of the pleasure the 
old and young have experienced in their delightful retreats, 
while their hundredfold associations, such as the journey of Sir 
Roger de Coverley to the gardens, old Jonathan Tyers, and 
the paintings in the pavilions by Hayman and Hogarth, create 
an interest seldom to be met with. The gardens derive their 
name from the manor of Vauxhall, or Faukeshall, but the 
tradition that the property belonged to Guy Fawkes is 
erroneous. The premises were in 161 5 the property of Jane 
Vaux, and the mansion was then called Stockdens. The 
gardens appear to have been originally planted with trees and 
laid out into walks for the pleasure of a private gentleman. Sir 
Samuel Moreland, who displayed in his house and gardens 
many whimsical proofs of his skill in mechanics. It is said 
these gardens were planted in the reign of Charles I. ; nor is 
it improbable, since, according to Aubrey, they were well 
known in 1667, when Sir Samuel Moreland, the proprietor, 



298 SOUTH LONDON 



^ 



added a public room to them, " the inside of which," he says, 
"is all looking-glass and fountains and very pleasant to 
behold, and which is much visited by strangers." The time 
when they were first opened for th^ entertainment of the 
public is involved in some uncertainty ; their celebrity is, 
however, established to be upwards of a century and a half 
old. In the reign of Queen Anne they appear to have been 
a place of great public resort, for in the " Spectator," No. 383, 
dated May 20, 171 2, Addison has introduced Sir Roger de 
Coverley as accompanying him in a voyage from Temple- 
stairs to Vauxhall, then called Spring Gardens. He says : 
" We made the best of our way to Foxhall ; " and describes 
the gardens as *• exceedingly pleasant at .this time of the 
year. When I considered the fragrancy of the walks and 
bowers with the choirs of birds that sung upon the trees and 
the tribe of people that walked under their shades, I could 
not but look on this place as a sort of Mohammedan Para- 
dise." Masks were then worn, at least by some visitors, for 
Addison talks of " a mask tapping Sir Roger on the shoulder 
and inviting him to dnnk a bottle of mead with her." A 
glass of Burton ale and a slice of hung beef formed the supper 
of the party. The place, however, resembled a tea-garden of 
our days till the year 1730, when Mr. Jonathan Tyers took a 
lease of the premises, and shortly afterwards opened Vauxhall 
with a Ridotto al Fresco. The novelty of the term attracted 
great numbers, and Mr. Tyers was so successful in occasional 
repetitions as to be induced to open the gardens every even- 
ing during the summer. Hogarth at this time had lodgings 
at Lambeth-terrace, and, becoming intimate with Tyers, was 
induced to embellish the gardens with his designs, in which he 
was joined by Hayman. The house which he occupied is 
still shown, and a vine pointed out which he planted. Tyers's 
improvements consisted of sweeps of pavilions and saloons, 
in which these paintings were placed. He also erected an 
orchestra, engaged a band of music, and placed a fine statue of 



THE PLEASURE GARDENS 299 

Handel by Roubiliac in a conspicuous part of the gardens. 
Mr. Cunningham dates the appearance of this statue, which 
was RoubiHac's earliest work, at 1732. Mr. Tyers afterwards 
purchased the whole of the estate, which is copyhold of in- 
heritance, and held of the Prince of Wales, as lord of Ken- 
nington manor, in right of his Duchy of Cornwall. The 
gardens were originally opened daily (Sunday excepted), and 
till the year 1792 the admission was is. ; it was then raised 
to 2s., including tea and coffee; in 1809 several improve- 
ments were made, lamps added, &c., the pjice was raised to 
^s. 6d, and the gardens were only opened three nights in the 
week ; in 1821 the price was again raised to 4^. Upon the 
death of Mr. Jonathan Tyers, the gardens became the pro- 
perty of Mr. Bryant Barrett, who married the granddaughter 
of the original proprietor. They next descended to Mr. 
Barrett's sons, and from them by right of purchase to the late 
proprietors. Mr. Thomas Tyers, a son of the famous Jona- 
than Tyers, and author of" Biographical Sketches of Johnson," 
and " Political Conferences," who died on February i, 1787, 
contributed many poetic trifles to the gardens. The repre- 
sentation of the Ridotto al Fresco is thus described by one of 
the newspapers of June 21, 1732 : "On Wednesday, at the 
Ridotto al Fresco at Vauxhall, there was not one half of the 
company as was expected, being no more than 203 persons, 
amongst whom were several persons of distinction, but more 
ladies than gentlemen, and the whole was managed with 
great order and decency; a detachment of 100 of the Foot 
Guards being posted round the gardens. A waiter belonging 
to the house having got drunk put on a dress and went to 
fresco with the rest of the company, but being discovered he 
was immediately turned out of doors." The season of 1739 
was for three months, and the admittance was by silver 
tickets. The proprietors then announced that " 1,000 tickets 
would only be delivered at 2^s. each, the silver of every 
ticket to be worth 3^-. 2d., and to admit two persons every 



300 SOUTH LONDON 

evening (Sunday excepted) during the season." It appears 
that these silver tickets were struck after designs by Hogarth, 
and a plate of some of them shows the following : — Mr. John 
Hinton, 212, 1794 ; on the reverse side the figure of Calliope. 
Mr. Wood, 6^, 1750 ; on the reverse side three boys playing 
with a lyre, and the motto '' Jocoscb conveniunt Lyres'' Mr. 
R. Frankling, 70 , on the reverse side figure of Euterpe. 
Mr. Samuel Lewes, 87 ; on the reverse side the figure of 
Erato. Mr. Carey, 1 1 ; on the reverse side the figure of Thalia. 
This plate also exhibits the gold ticket, a perpetual admission 
given to Hogarth by Jonathan Tyers, in gratitude for his 
advice and assistance in decorating the gardens. After his 
decease it remained in the hands of Mrs. Hogarth, his widow, 
who bequeathed it to her relation, Mrs. Mary Lewis, who 
subsequently left it to Mr. P. F. Hart, who in his will, in 1823, 
beq.ueathed it to Mr. John Tuck. It is hardly necessary to say 
that the ticket is after Hogarth's own design. The face of it 
presents the word " Hogarth," in a bold hand, beneath which 
is " In perpetuam beneficii inernoriainr On the reverse there 
are two figures, surrounded with the motto, " Virtus voluptas 
felices una^ It also appears that Roubiliac furnished a 
statue of Milton for the gardens. Among the singers 
Beard and Lowe were early favourites ; then came Dignum, 
Mrs. Weichsel, Mrs. Billington, Signora Storace, Incledon, 
Mrs. Bland, &c. In later years. Misses Tunstall, Noel, 
Melville, and Williams ; Stephens, Love, Madame Cornega, 
and Madame Vestris ; Mr. Braham, Mr. Sinclair, Mr. Robin- 
son, and Signer de Begnis, &c., with Signer Spagnoletti as 
leader.' 



301 



CHAPTER XVII 



SOUTH LONDON OF TO-DAY 




A DOORWAY, CURLEW STREET, BERMONDSEY 



The expansion of Lon- 
don during the Nine- 
teenth Century is in 
itself a fact unparalleled 
in the history of cities. 
Those who call attention 
to this miracle always 
point to the filling up 
of the huge area between 
Highgate and Hamp- 
stead and Clerkenwell 
in the North, or the 
extension of the town 
to Hammersmith on 
the West. Perhaps a 
little consideration of 
the South may show 

V^a still more remark- 
able growth. I have 

Av before me a map of the 
year 1834, only sixty- 
four years ago, showing 
South London as it was. 
I see a small town 
or collection of small 
towns, occupying the 



302 



SOUTH LONDON 



district called the Borough Proper, Lambeth, Newington, 
Walworth, and Bermondsey. In some parts this area is 
denselypopulated, filled with narrowcourts and lanes ; in other 
parts there are broad fields, open spaces, unoccupied pieces 
of ground. At the back of Vauxhall Gardens, for instance. 



•iTT!^., 



?>^ 




IN snow's fields, bermondsey 



there are open fields; in Walworth there is a certain place, 
then notorious for the people who lived there, called Snow's 
fields; in Bermondsey there are also open spaces, some of 
them gardens, or recreation grounds, without any buildings. 
Battersea is a mere stretch of open country. I myself re- 



SOUTH LONDON OF TO-DAY 



303 



member the old Battersea Fields perfectly well ; one shivers 
at the recollection ; they were low, flat, damp, and, I be- 
lieve, treeless ; they were crossed, like Hackney Marsh, by 
paths raised above the level ; at no time of year could the 
Battersea Fields look anything but dreary. In winter they 







were mexpres- 
sibly dismal. As 
a boy I have 
walked across 
the fields in 
order to get 
to the embank- 
ment or river 
from which one 
CroTi rf^ 5)t/rrw I^cnK commanded a view of 
^^-^ the Thames with its 

barges and lighters going up and down — pleasant when the 
sun shone on the river, but a mere shadow of the ancient 
glory when the pleasure barges and the State barges swept 
majestically up the river with the hautboys and the trumpets 
in the bows ; when the swans by thousands sailed upon the 
broad bosom of the waters, and in the middle of the river 



304 SOUTH LONDON 

the fisherman cast his net, as Edric had done fifteen hundred 
years before at St. Peter's orders, when he brought out his 
famous salmon. One walked along the embankment; the 
fields on one side were lower than the waters on the other. 
Beyond the river were the trees of Chelsea Hospital. Close 
to the river bank was an enclosure which was called the 
Subscription Ground ; here the subscribers came to shoot 
pigeons — noble sport. If I remember aright, while the 
subscribing sportsmen shot at the pigeons in the enclosure, 
others of low condition who were not subscribers lurked 
about on the outside to shoot down those birds which 
escaped from the murderers within. Close by the Subscrip- 
tion Ground was a certain famous tavern called the Red 
House. I do not know why it was famous, but everybody 
always said it was. I believe it was much frequented on 
summer evenings, and that the subscribing sportsmen close 
by, whether they hit their pigeon or not, proved excellent 
customers for the drinks of the Red House. At that time 
there were * famous ' taverns all up and down the river on 
either bank. There are still riverside taverns, but the in- 
vasion of the new streets and houses has driven them, con- 
sidered as * famous ' taverns, either higher up, or lower 
down. As mere commonplace public houses they probably 
remain still. Things were done on the Battersea Fields and 
there were certain historical associations in connection with 
these dreary flats. Here, for instance, the Duke of Welling- 
ton fought a duel with Lord Winchilsea. Other important 
people were also connected either with the Fields or the 
Village of Battersea, but at the time I knew not anything 
about them. The Battersea of my boyhood is gone abso- 
lutely: no trace of it remains, except the Church. The 
Grosvenor Railway Bridge passes over the site of the famous 
Red House; the most beautiful of all our parks covers the 
Subscription Shooting Grounds, together with most of the 
fiat and dreary fields; and houses by the thousand, with 



SOUTH LONDON OF TO-DAY 



305 



streets mean and monotonous, stand where formerly the 
pigeons flew wildly, hoping to escape those who waited out- 
side the grounds as they had escaped those who potted at 
them from within. 

Let us turn to another part of the map and inquire into 






<'W^ 










^ 



-^i^ 



HOLY TRINITY, ROTHERHITHE 



Rotherhithe. It is curious that at one end we get Rother- 
hithe, the Place of Cattle; and at the other Lambeth or 
Lambhythe, if it be the ' Place of Lambs ' and not the 
• Place of Mud.' In 1834 the Commercial Docks are already 
there, but without prejudice to the ancient and venerable 
docks of the preceding century, Acorn Dock and Lavender 



3o6 SOUTH LONDON 

Dock. A single street runs along the Embankment, which 
it hides and covers : at the back of this street there is a suc- 
cession of small lanes and courts running back with tiny- 
houses — two or four rooms to each — on either side, and 
ending generally in gardens of greenery — leaves and palings. 
You may still see, in 1898, if you are lucky, the bows and 
bowsprit of a ship in one of the old docks, sticking across 
the street, causing a momentary confusion in the mind be- 
tween land and water; there are riverside taverns which 
look as if at a touch they would yield and slide into the 
mud below. In 1834 this street with these little lanes was 
the whole of Rotherhithe. Inland — or in-marsh — ponds 
and ditches and stagnant streams lay about ; one of the 
ponds survives to this day; you will find it in the middle of 
the pretty garden they call Southwark Park, of which it 
forms the ornamental water. And the rest of Rotherhithe, 
between the Park and Bermondsey, is one unbroken mass 
of streets with no green thing and no open space. All is 
filled up and built upon. 

A little beyond Rotherhithe lies Deptford. On my map 
of 1834 I see a little town, lying partly on the bank of the 
Thames, partly on the bank of the Ravensbourne, which here 
widens out and forms Deptford Creek. The greater part of 
the area of Deptford is taken up by the Dockyard, not yet 
closed. As for the town, which now contains nearly ioo,ocx) 
people, about five and twenty little streets sufficed for all its 
people ; it boasted of two churches and two almshouses. One 
of these Havens of Rest was so picturesque and so beautiful 
that it could not be suffered to remain. Almshouses which 
are perfectly beautiful are only vouchsafed to man for a 
limited period, lest other buildings become intolerable. 
Their time expired, they are then carried off Heavenwards. 

Or turn your eyes further south. London in this direc- 
tion now covers — for the most part completely, in some 
parts leaving spaces and fields here and there — Greenwich, 



SOUTH LONDON OF TO-DAY 



307 



Blackheath, Brockley, Peckham, Forest Hill, Dulwich, 
Brixton, Stockwell, Camberwell, Clapham, Balham, Wands- 
worth, Vauxhall, and Penge, and many others. 

It is difficult, now that the whole country south of Lon- 
don has been covered with villas, roads, streets, and shops, 
to understand how wonderful for loveliness it was until the 
builder seized upon it. When the ground rose out of the 
great Lambeth and Bermondsey Marsh — the cliff or incline 
is marked still by the names of Battersea Rise, Clapham 




CZAR PETER'S HOUSE, DEPTFOKD 

Rise, and Brixton Rise— it opened out into one wild heath 
after another— Clapham, Wandsworth, Putney, Wimbledon, 
Barnes, Tooting, Streatham, Richmond, Thornton, and so 
south as far as Banstead Downs. The country was not 
flat : it rose at Wimbledon to a high plateau ; it rose at Nor- 
wood to a chain of hills; between the Heaths stretched 
gardens and orchards; between the orchards were pasture 
lands; on the hillsides were hanging woods; villages were 
scattered about, each with its venerable church and its 
peaceful churchyard ; along the high roads to Dovei*, South- 



3o8 SOUTH LONDON 

ampton, and Portsmouth bumped and rolled, all day and all 
night, the stage-coaches and the waggons ; the wayside inns 
were crowded with those who halted to drink, those who 
halted to dine, and those who halted to sleep: if the village 
lay off the main road it was as quiet and as secure as the 
town of Laish. All this beauty is gone; we have destroyed 
it: all this beauty has gone for ever; it cannot be replaced. 
And on the south there was so much more beauty than on 
the north. On the latter side of London there are the 
heights with Hampstead, Highgate, and Hornsey — one row 
of villages; but there is little more. The country between 
Hatfield or St. Alban's and Hampstead is singularly dull and 
uninteresting: it is not until one reaches Hertford or Rick- 
mansworth that one comes once more into lovely country. 
But the loveliness of South London lay almost at the very 
doors of London: one could walk into it; the heaths were 
within an easy walk, and the loveliness of Surrey lay upon all. 

I have mentioned already some of the heaths, those whieh 
remain at the present moment. To many it will be a mat- 
ter of surprise to hear of the many waste and wild places 
which have been appropriated and built over in the last two 
hundred years. In the parish of Lambeth alone, an exten- 
sive tract, it is true, there was nearly 500 acres of commons: 
namely, Kennington, Norwood, Norwood Common (in 
another part of Norwood), Hall Lane, Knight's Hill Green, 
Half Moon Green, Rush Common, South Stockwell Com- 
mon, South Lambeth and North Stockwell Common. With 
the exception of the first all these are now gone. 

Look at Dulwich — the peaceful and picturesque village of 
Dulwich on this map of 1834. It lies among its trees, its 
gardens, and its fields: the venerable college of Alleyn is 
the glory of the village — nothing more beautiful than this 
almshouse with its hall and its picture gallery. Yet the 
people flocked out to Dulwich less for the picture gallery 
than the shady walks, the fields, and a certain tavern — the 



SOUTH LONDON OF TO-DAY 



309 



Greyhound — which was beloved by everybody, and believed 
to contain a particular brew of beer, a particular kind of 
old Jamaica for punch, a particular vintage of port not to 
be found anywhere else, even in a City company's cellars. 
There was, in fact, no more favourite place of resort for the 
better sort of citizens of London than Dulwich in the sum- 
mer. For the poorer sort it was too far off, and cost too 
much in conveyance. The Dulwich stage ran two or three 







alleyn's almshouses, 1840 



times a day: it was not too long a drive from the city; the 
young men rode — in those days the young men could all 
ride — even John Gilpin thought he could ride; they hired a 
horse as we now get into a cab. For those who lived in 
any suburb on the south, Dulwich was an easy walk. Not 
far from the college and the village — Mr. Pickwick lived 
there in 1834 — were the Dulwich Fields, as beautiful and 
interesting as those of Battersea were the contrary: there 



3IO SOUTH LONDON 

were, I think, five of them in succession : the little stream 
called the Effra rose somewhere in the neighbourhood, and 
ran about, winding through the fields in a deep channel with 
rustic bridges across. In older days — at the end of the 
eighteenth century, for example, the Effra, a bright and 
sparkling stream, ran out of the fields above what is now 
called the Effra Road, and so along the south side — or was 
it the north ? — of Brixton Road. Rustic cottages stood on 
the other side of the stream, with flowering shrubs — lilac, 
laburnum, and hawthorn — on the bank, and beds of the 
simpler flowers in the summer : the gardens and the cottages 
were approached by little wooden bridges, each provided 
with a single rail painted green. That, however, was before 
my time. In the 'fifties the boys used to play in these 
fields, jumping over the stream: when they left the fields 
and got into the village they looked about for Mr. Pickwick 
and for Sam Weller, if haply they might see either. But I 
do not learn that either sage or servant ever gratified those 
eyes of faith by an incarnation. 

Here are three hills close together: Heme Hill, Denmark 
Hill, and Champion Hill. On Denmark Hill Ruskin once 
lived; but in the 'fifties I was not conscious of that fact or 
of his greatness. It must be saddening to a great man to 
reflect that none of the boys has any respect for him. The 
road up the hill Avas somewhat gloomy on account of the 
trees : the houses, with their gardens and lawns, and carriage 
drives, and smoothness and snugness, betokened in those 
years the institution of evening prayers. I fear I may be 
misunderstood. At that time great was the power and the 
authority of seriousness. To be serious was fashionable, if 
one may say so, in City circles. Respectability was nearly 
always serious: it was divided into two classes: that which 
had morning prayers only, and that which had evening 
prayers as well. With the young, the latter institution was 
unpopular — no one of the present younger generation can 



SOUTH LONDON OF TO-DAY 



311 



understand how unpopular it was: a house which had eve- 
ning prayers made a deliberate profession of a seriousness 
which was something out of the common, which the young 
people disliked, as a rule ; and it insisted on the sons getting 
home in time for prayers. This profession of seriousness 
generally belonged to a large house, beautiful gardens, rich 
conservatories, a large income, and a carriage and pair. 
Denmark Hill used to appear to outward view as more espe- 




DULWICH COLLEGE, I780 

cially a suburb belonging to the serious rich, who could 
afford a profession of more than common earnestness. 

Heme Hill was remarkable for consisting of three houses 
only, each with its parklike grounds and gardens and its 
noble trees. Champion Hill I remember as a green and 
grassy slope : there were no houses at all upon it : but there 
was a road, and at the bottom of the road a green called 
Goose Green— you may still find this tract of grass, but I 
believe it is now pinched and attenuated. On Goose 



312 SOUTH LONDON 

Green they kept ponies for hire: the boys used to ride 
them up the hill and gallop them down the hill. Beyond 
this green there was a much larger expanse called Peckham 
Rye: so far as I can remember it was a most uninviting 
place formerly; not a wild heath like Putney or Hampstead, 
not a waste place covered with fern and gorse and bramble 
and wild trees; but a barren, dreary expanse of uncertain 
grass. Boys would perhaps have played cricket upon it in 
summer, but there were then no boys at Peckham Rye. 
Now all this country is covered with houses, and Peckham 
is like Bloomsbury itself for streets and terraces and squares. 
We have not only destroyed the former beauty of South 
London : we have forgotten it. Ask a resident of Penge — 
one of the many thousands of Penge — what this suburban 
town was like seventy years ago. Do you think he can tell 
you anything of Penge Common ? Has he ever heard of 
any Penge Common ? Well, it is exactly seventy years ago 
— viz. in May 1827 — that Mr. William Hone — the compiler 
of the * Every Day Book,' climbed up outside the Dulwich 
stage, proposing to visit the picture gallery of Dulwich Col- 
lege. Hone was one of the first of those curious and in- 
quisitive persons who began to employ a summer day in 
exploring the unknown villages and strange places round 
London. The picture gallery he could not see because it 
was closed; he therefore walked across the country from 
Dulwich to a place called Penge. At the top of a hill he 
found a choice of three roads. He chose that which led 
through Penge Common. The place was thickly wooded : 
it was, he says, * a cathedral of singing birds.' At the mere 
recollection of that choir he bursts into verse — other people's 
verse. Alas! the Common had already, even then, been 
ravished from its owners, the people : it was enclosed ; it 
was doomed; it was about to be built upon. Mr. Hone 
consoled himself, however, at the * Old Crooked Billet,' 
with eggs and bacon and home-brewed ale. Again, is there 



A 



SOUTH LONDON OF TO-DAY 



313 



anyone in Penge who now remembers the hanging woods ? 
They hung over a hillside, and were as beautiful as the 
hanging woods of Clifden. But, like the Common, they 
are gone. 

Or let us ask the resident of Norwood what he remembers 
of its ancient glories ; whether there were any ancient glo- 
ries. Has he heard of the famous Norwood oak ? Of the 













ir^^H^^^.dte 




"f^^fe .^^Jr^ 



Norwood Spa ? Of the gypsies of Norwood ? Why, the 
Queen of all the gypsies, unless there was a more powerful 
sovereign at Jedburgh, held her court and camp at Nor- 
wood. Has this resident heard of the views from the top 
of the hill, four hundred feet above the level of the sea, 
whither the people flocked by hundreds to see the view and 
to wander in the woods ? 

All this beauty is destroyed. Of course, the destruction 
was inevitable. One accepts the inevitable with a sigh ; we 



314 SOUTH LONDON 

cannot have town and country together. The woods are 
gone, the rural Hfe is gone, encroachments have been made 
upon the commons, the wayside tavern — the place was full 
of wayside taverns — is gone. What remains of all this 
beauty is a fragment here and there. Clapham Common, 
once a heath, now a park; Wimbledon Common, Tooting 
Common ; these expanres are mercifully left us for breath- 
ing places. Some of them, like Clapham, are transformed 
into imitations of a park, instead of being left as a heath. 
All of them are bereft, of course, of their old accompani- 
ments; they have lost the wood beside the heath, the farm, 
the ploughed lands, the tinkle of the sheep bell, the song 
of the skylark. 

We have seen in the course of these chapters some of the 
associations of South London. I confess that, for my own 
part, I am not happy in considering associations connected 
with rows of terraces and villas. Here, you say, was once 
the house, with the park, of such and such a great man. 
Really! I daresay. But it is now covered with gentility. 
If I am taken to a slum — such a slum as that on the west of 
St. Mary Overies, and am told that in this place was Win- 
chester House, I am at once interested. Why should the 
memory of the past appeal to our imagination more in a 
slum than in a brand new, spick-and-span collection of pleas- 
ant country villas ? Is it from a feeling that all things tend 
to decay, and that the new suburb speaks not of decay ? 
Who, for instance, stepping from the south-east corner of 
Tooting Common into the place which was once Streatham 
Park, can think of Mrs. Thrale and Dr. Johnson among 
these roads and villas ? At Tooting itself, one might re- 
member, were it not for the houses, Daniel De Foe, who 
founded the first Independent chapel there. At Wands- 
worth, if it were not so much built upon, I might see Vol- 
taire walking about. At Putney, but for the villas, I should 
look for Pitt. Oh ! there are a thousand people once living, 



SOUTH LONDON OF TO-DAY 



315 



and walking, and playing their parts in their villages, whose 
wraiths and spectres would willingly haunt them still, but 
cannot for the bricks and the walls, the chimneys and the 
smoke, the roads and the trams. 

We have destroyed the beauty of South London : we 
have made its historical associations impossible. 

The first settlers or colonisers of this region, apart from 

if • >jf «- :^ r 







its rural folk, came from London about the time when 
roads began to be tolerable ; that is to say, late in the seven- 
teenth century; they were the great folk, the leisured folk, 
the quality, who had suburban houses in addition to their 
town houses and their country houses. They sought shelter 
in the quiet retreats of Clapham, Streatham, or Norwood. 



3i6 SOUTH LONDON 

These people did not come, however, to settle, but only re- 
mained as a rule, for a year or two, for a few months, for a 
season. When the roads became so far improved as to 
make driving easy and pleasant, the city merchants came 
and built or bought big houses, and drove in and out every 
day in their carriage and pair. They did not buy estates, 
as a rule : they bought a substantial house and grounds, and 
sat down therein. They had large gardens behind, with 
greenhouses where they grew early strawberries; they had 
in front a broad lawn with a carriage drive ; they liked to 
have in the lawn two stately cedars, whose branches swept 
the grass. They brought their friends down from Saturday 
to Monday. In course of time other people came; but the 
first comers — these merchants — were the aristocracy, the 
first families of the suburbs. In the newer places there are 
still to be found the first families; in the older suburbs they 
have all disappeared from the place. Thus Clapham, I be- 
lieve, knows no longer a Macaulay, a Wilberforce, a Thorn- 
ton, a Venn. These were people of national distinction. 
Of course there were not in other suburbs first families who 
rose to the giddy heights attained by these fortunate aristo- 
crats of the suburbs ; but there were many which had among 
them ex-Lord Mayors and Aldermen; there were many 
persons among them of dignity and authority. Alas! the 
first families are gone : there is now no aristocracy of the 
suburbs left. It is a pity. There should be in every com- 
munity some whose position entitles them to respect and 
authority; there should be some to take the lead naturally; 
there should be some who should maintain the standards of 
conduct, ideas, and principles. Especially is this the case 
when by far the greater part of the people in a community 
are engaged in trade. 

I cannot quite avoid the use of figures, because a compare 
ispn, between the population of these villages in 1801 with 
that of these great towns in 1898 is so startling that it must 



J 



SOUTH LONDON OF TO-DAY 



317 



be recorded. Battersea has risen from 3,365 to 165,115; 
Camberwell from 7,05910 253,076; Lambeth from 27,985 to 
295,033; Lewisham from 4,007 to 104,521; Wandsworth 
from 14,383 to 187,264. Or, taking the whole area of South 
London, that part which is covered by the electoral districts, 




ST. SAVIOUR'S DOCK 



there is now a population of very nearly two millions ; in 
other words the population, in less than a hundred years, 
has been multipHed by ten. That of London itself, in the 
same time, the London including the City, Clerkenwell, 
Whitechapel, Bloomsbury, and Westminster, has been mul- 
tiplied during the same time by five. What has caused this 



3i8 SOUTH LONDON 

enormous increase in South London ? Well, people must 
live somewhere; the old limits proved insufficient. First, 
places which had been dotted over with fields and gardens 
and vacant places, such as Southwark on the west side, and 
Bermondsey, were completely built over and inhabited. 
Then, when it became a problem how to stow away the 
people within reach of their work, the ' short stage ' was 
supplemented by the omnibus. Next South London 
stretched itself out farther; it began to include Camberwell, 
Brixton, Stockwell, Clapham, and Wandsworth. These 
were separate suburbs lying each among its own gardens ; 
the inhabitants were not clerks, but principals and employ- 
ers, substantial merchants and flourishing shopkeepers. The 
clerks lived nearer London, mostly on the north of the river. 
Lastly came the railway, when London made another step 
outward, so as to take in the places lying south of Clapham 
and Brixton. Then the builder began; he saw that a new 
class of residents would be attracted by small houses and low 
rents. The houses sprang up as if in a single night ; streets 
in a month, churches and chapels in a quarter. The popula- 
tion of South London no longer consists of rich merchants, 
principals, and partners. Clerks, assistants, and employes 
of all kinds now crowd the morning and evening trains. 

If you want to form some idea of the South London folk, 
go stand inside Cannon Street Station and watch the trains 
come in, each with its freight of those who earn their daily 
bread within the City. See them pass out — by the hundred 
— by the thousand — by the fifty thousand. The brain reels 
at the mere contemplation of this mighty multitude which 
comes in every morning and goes out every afternoon. As 
they hurry past you observe on each the same expression, 
the same set eagerness, with which the day's work is ap- 
proached. Employer or employe, principal or clerk, it 
matters nothing. The clerk, who will get none of the thou- 
sands he is helping to secure, comes in to town as eager for 



SOUTH LONDON OF TO-DAY 



319 



the fray as his master; the fighting instinct is in the man; 
his face means battle, daily battle, in which the weapons 
are' superior knowledge, earlier knowledge, keen sight, 
readiness, ruthlessness, while there is as much need, for 






mt^^JkM 




^elev/^rry ^^ri^n^^ 



'cr 



success, of courage, tenacity, and bluff as in any battle be- 
tween contending armies. The many twinkling feet pass 
out of the station by the hundred thousand, every morning, 
to the field of battle. The English are a warlike people; 
they enjoy the field of battle ; the City is like that state of 



^20 SOUTH LONDON 

beatitude which the pious Dane desired, in which there 
would be fighting every day, and all day, and for ever. 

In South London there are two millions of people. It is 
therefore one of the great cities of the world. It stands 
upon an area about twelve miles long and five or six broad 
— but its limits cannot be laid down even approximately. 
It is a city without a municipality, without a centre, with- 
out a civic history; it has no newspapers, magazines, or 
journals ; it has no university ; it has no colleges, apart from 
medicine; it has no intellectual, artistic, scientific, musical, 
literary centre — unless the Crystal Palace can be considered 
a centre ; its residents have no local patriotism or enthusiasm 
— one cannot imagine a man proud of New Cross; it has no 
theatres, except of a very popular or humble kind ; it has 
no clubs, it has no public buildings, it has no West End. 
It is argued that although it has none of these things, yet 
it has them all by right of being a part of London. That is, 
in a sense, true. The theatres, concerts, picture galleries of 
the West End are accessible to the South. Far be it from 
me to deny the culture of Sydenham and the artistic eleva- 
tion of Tooting. Yet one feels there must surely be some 
disadvantage in being separated from the literary and artistic 
circles whose members, it must be confessed, reside for the 
most part in North London. It must surely, one thinks, be 
a disadvantage for a young man who would pursue a career 
in art not to live among people who habitually talk of art 
and think of art. It must surely be some disadvantage to 
live in a place where the people, when they are gathered 
together, mostly allow the conversation to turn upon things 
connected with the City. # 

How are these two millions distributed ? 

There are, in fact, four layers. First, there is the * sub- 
merged * element, the people of the slums of which mention 
has been made. Their numbers and their proportion to the 
whole I know not. Next, there are the working people, 



I 



SOUTH LONDON OF TO-DAY 



321 



those for whom the long lines, the endless lines, of barracks 
called model lodging houses, have been built. Here they 
live by the hundred thousand— by the million : there are 
more than a million working men in South London. For 
their use are the shops of the Borough, chiefly provision 
shops, and the public houses. The third layer is found on 
a slip of ground, of which Newington and Kennington may 

?4p 




be taken as representative : it consists principally of lodging 
houses for clerks. The fourth layer is that of the suburban 
villa, from the little semi-detached cottage to the stately man- 
sion. The * High Street, ' filled with shops, is for the villas. 
Now, the whole of this immense population lives upon 
the City. The bread-winners go in and out every day; the 
local shops provide for the houses, and are paid out of the 
money made in the City; the local doctor, the local house 



522 SOUTH LONDON 

agent, the local schoolmaster, the local clergyman, all re- 
ceive their share of the money made in the City ; even if 
there be, here and there, a literary man, his wares are bought 
by the money made in the City- the artist looks for his 
patron to the City ; the working man, whatever his work, is 
paid out of the City, so that the first function of the City 
is to feed and supply all these millions. If at any time the 
trade of the City were to decay, these suburbs would decay 
as well ; if the decay were gradual, they would slowly cease 
to spread, begin to show empty houses and deserted streets; 
if the decay were to mean ruin, the suburbs would them- 
selves be speedily deserted. Then would be seen a deserted 
city on a scale never before equalled. Tadmor in the Wilder- 
ness would be a mere little wheelbarrow full of stones com- 
pared with suburban London given over to decay and wreck. 

Two millions of people, most of whom belong to the 
working class! The brain reels at thinking of this teeming 
multitudinous life; these armies of men, women, and child- 
ren living in the slums and in the huge, unlovely barracks. 
The very number makes it impossible to grasp the enormity 
of the mass ; the vastness of the population makes one feel 
as if individual effort would be absolutely useless. In a 
sense it is useless, because it can only touch one or two, 
and what are they among so many ? But in another sense, 
as I will presently show, individual effort may produce con- 
sequences both deep and widespread. 

It seems, again, when one contemplates this mass of 
humanity — this compact round ball of men and women, to 
make which two millions have been brought together — as if 
any one life was nothing, as if the life of anyone out of the 
heap — any girl, any lad — was wholly unimportant and trivial, 
however that life were spent. That is not so : every heap is 
made up of atoms ; the influence of the individual is as great 
in a densely populated place as in a village. One example 
is precious — beyond all price — in a model dwelling house of 



J 



SOUTH LONDON OF TO-DAY 323 

Bermondsey as in the most retired community of rustics. 
It is very easy to generalise from the mass: the dweller of 
the slums stands before the mind's eye, beery, unwashed, 
in rags, inarticulate, his brain filled with thoughts which 
may better be described as suspicious, desirous of nothing 




but of food, drink, and warmth. That is what we think of 
him. It is because we do not know him. Ask those who 
go down among these people habitually, they will tell you 
of differences and distinctions among them as among our- 
selves, of memories of better things, of resignation rather 
than despair, and, at the very worst, of traits of generosity 



324 SOUTH LONDON 

and unselfishness worthy of a clean cottage and the air of a 
village green. We must be very careful how we form gen- 
eral conclusions about men and women. 

But — two millions of people ! And eveiy one of them 
wanting all the time what he thinks will make his life more 
happy. For the riverside folk the wants are few, but they 
are daily wants. With them, literally, it is a question of 
daily bread. Happy are the people whose wants are more 
numerous and their happiness more complex! 

Let me terminate this chapter by a brief account of cer- 
tain work of a philanthropic kind which is characteristic of 
the place and of the time. Many and various are the 
attempts and the associations and the machinery for raising 
some of these people and for keeping others from sliding 
down. There are the parish clergy, of late years better 
organised than at any previous time, more active, and more 
largely assisted; they have planted evening schools and 
clubs, for boys and girls. One must put the Church of 
England first, not only because her clergy began the work 
of rescue, but also because hers is still the larger part. 
There is, next, the indirect work of the medical students of 
Guy's and St. Thomas's, who go in and out among the 
worst courts, tolerated because they come to doctor the sick, 
and not to ask disagreeable questions about the children's 
school. There are, next, places which aim at civilising by 
the presentation of things civilised. For instance, there is 
a very pleasing institute in Whitecross Street, where a 
garden, an open air band, a lecture or concert hall, and a 
row of cottages beautiful to look upon are provided as 
a standard to which the people may rise by degrees. There 
are one or two Polytechnics for the lads, and, lastly, there 
are the * Settlements,' college settlements and others. Let 
me briefly describe the work and aims of one of these settle- 
ments. I have before me the last Report of the Browning 
Settlement in Walworth. It is called the Browning Settle- 



SOUTH LONDON OF TO-DAY 



325 



ment because its headquarters is the chapel in York Street 
in which Robert Browning was christened. 

As for their plan of work, perhaps the aims and methods of 
a * settlement ' are not too well known for repetition. They 



>)^Kv- 



.>?^ 










are not all the same, but the differences are slight. The 
directors of this settlement, for instance, desire to plant a 
settlement house in every poor street; a house which 
shall be inhabited by the workers, men or women, and shall 



326 SOUTH LONDON 

serve as a model for the other people in the street ; example 
in fact, is relied upon as a potent influence. There is, or 
will be, a large club house and coffee tavern for men and 
women, boys and girls. Once a week there is a concert in 
the hall. The members of the settlement take as large a 
part as possible in the local government ; they have laid out 
a burial ground at the back of their hall as a garden ; they 
have a medical mission which gives consultations free ; some 
of them are poor men's lawyers; they have introduced the 
University Extension Lectures; they have founded thrift 
agencies; they hold Sunday afternoons for the men; they 
have a maternity society ; they have a clothes store ; they 
have an adult school. Classes are held in hygiene, mathe- 
matics, and classics ; there have been Shakespeare readings, 
music, singing, country holidays, summer camps, children's 
holidays ; there is a boys* brigade ; there is a musical drill ; 
there are May Day and Harvest Festivals ; and there are, in 
addition, works of religion and temperance which I have 
not enumerated above. 

The keynote of all such work as this is, for the workers, 
personal service ; for the people, the influence of example, 
the attraction of things which they understand at once to be 
a great deal more pleasant than the bar and the tap-room; 
such a variety of work and recreation as may drag all into 
the net except the substratum of all, whom nothing can lift 
out of the mire. 

One or two things have yet to be learned as regards these 
settlements. First, how large an area in a densely popu- 
lated part can be covered by a single settlement ? Next, 
how many young men can be found to carry on the work ? 
For instance, if the Browning Settlement can reach — of 
course it cannot — all the people of Walworth, which is in 
the Parish of Newington, and includes 120,000 people, there 
ought to be nine other settlements in South London from 
Battersea to Greenwich, both included. If we give 20,000 



SOUTH LONDON OF TO DAY 327 

people for each settlement, then there ought to be at least 
fifty settlements for the millions of the working class. 
The Report does not state how many residents there are, 
but gives a list of the officers and managers of departments. 




Zntfevuce 




^"""7>r.,.7 



'"^^U,^' 



from which it would seem that about thirty are act.vely en- 
gaged from day to day. So that fifteer, hundred voluntary 
workers in all would be required in order to cover th.s land 
of slums with an effective string of settlements. 



328 SOUTH LONDON 



^ 



There never was a time when more determined efforts 
have been made for the elevation of the submerged, and 
there never was a time when so many young men and young 
women have been found ready to give the whole of their 
time, or all their spare time, to the work. Whether they 
will succeed in effecting a permanent improvement remains 
to be seen ; whether the attraction of personal devotion 
which is now passing over the minds of the young will con- 
tinue and remain with us has also to be proved. The direc- 
tors of the Browning Settlement meantime declare — I have 
no intention of questioning the truth of their assertion — 
that they find already among the people ' a quickening of 
spirit, shown in keener intellectual interest, intenser civic 
ardour, warmer friendship, and more avowed piety.' If 
such are the fruits of a settlement, we cannot but desire for 
South London a chain of settlements reaching from Batter- 
sea to Greenwich, both inclusive. 



INDEX 



AcRENSis, Thomas, i6i 
Actors, Company of, 225 -228 
Ailwin, Childe, 52 
Albion Island, 4 
Alfred repairs the Walls, 31 
AUectus, Emperor, 18, 26 
Alley n, Edward, 271 
Arundell, Archbishop, 114, 116 
Asclepiodotus, 29 
Awdry, Legend of, 1 5 



Bankside, 217 
Battersea Fields, 303, 304 
Battle of Clapham Common, 18 

— on London Bridge, 148- 150 
Bear Garden Alley, 214 

* Below Bridge,' 229 
Bermondsey, Religious House, 51 

— Spa Gardens, 292 

— Hall, 233 

Bill of a Feast, 265 
Boadicea, Queen, 26 
Boleyn, Anne, 122 
Bombardment of London, 153 
Borough Compter, 249, 272, 278 

— Society, 260, 261 
Bridge across the River, 12 

— at the Barefoot Tavern, 264 

— Construction of, 29 

— Destroyed and repaired, 44, 45 
— , The, 25 

— when built, 26 

Bridges, Roman Method of Building, 28 
Bull and Bear Baiting, 210, 21 1 
Burials and Marriages in St. Mary 
Overies, 64 



Cade's Rebellion, 148 



Canal of Cnut, Maitland's Discovery of, 

38 
Canterbury, Pilgrimages to, 163 

— Tales, 168-176. 
Carausius, History of, 18 
Causeway across Southwark Marsh, 6, 

7 

— the Lie of, 6, 7 

Chapel of St. Peter on the Wall, 4 
Charles II. 's Restoration, 129 
Charlton Fair, 188 
Chaucer's Company of Pilgrims, 168- 

174 
Chelsea—' Isle of Shingle,' 6 
Christmas at Kennington Palace, 77- 

79 
Clapham Common Battle, 18 

— Rise, 5 
Clink Prison, 248 

Cnut's Canal, Course of, 40, 41 

— Siege, 38 

— Trench, 38 

Commercial Docks, 234, 305 
Copt Hall or Vauxhall, 1 1 1 
Count of the Saxon Shore, 1 7 
Cranmer, Martyrdom of, 65 
Cuper's Gardens, 252, 288 



Danes defeated, 35 

Danish Alliance against London, 32, 

33 
— Invasion, Second, 36 
Debtors' Prisons, 272 
Denmark Hill, 311 
Deptford, 234-238, 306 
' Dog and Duck,' 289-292 
Domesday Book compiled, 72 
Dover Road, 25 
Dry Ground beyond Kennington, 5 



330 



SOUTH LONDON 



Duels in Battersea Fields, 304 
Dulwich Fields, 309 



Earl Godwine's Invasion, 42 
Earliest Maps of South London, 47 
Edmund fights Cnut, 38 
Edward the Third's Entertainment at 

Eltham Palace, 96 
Effra River, 310 
Elizabeth, Queen, at Greenwich, 103, 

105, 108. 
Elizabeth Woodville, 62 
Eltham owned by Theodoric, 72 
Eltham Palace, 69, 71, 74, 75, 89-- 

97 
Eltham Palace, Remains of, 94 
Embankment, Early Repairs of, 12 
— First, of River, ii, 12 

Extent of South London, 2 



Fabri, Felix, Pilgrimage of, 176 

Fairs of London, 179 

Falconbridge, Bastard of, 153 

Falcon Stream, 3 

Falstaff, Sir John, History of, 134 152 

Ferries across Marsh, 26 

Field, Nathan, 223 

Fisher, Bishop of Rochester, 1 10 

Fleet sent against the Danes, 32 

Ford of Thorney, 5 

Freemantle, History by, i 



GiLDABLE Manor, 48 
Gokstad's ship, 33, 40, 4] 
Goose Green, 311 
Great South Marsh, 2 
Green Dragon Inn, 262 
Greenwich Fair, 188 

— Hospital, 109 

— Palace, 97- 109 



Hackney Marsh, 1 1 

— Marshes, 6 

Hanger, Colonel, Memoirs of, 275 

Harold Harefoot, 71 

Hengist and ^sc, 20 



Henry HI. at Eltham, 90 

— VI. 's Coronation, 126-129 
Heme Hill, 311 

High Street, Borough, 10 

— — Southwark, 254 

Hope Theatre, Southwark, 221 
Horseferry Road, Origin of Name, 5 
Horselydown, 231 

— Fair, 229 

Hubert, Archbishop of Canterbury, 
118 



Inns of Southwark, 16, 262, 263 
Insignia of Pilgrimage, 157 
Islands in the Marsh, 2 
Isle of Bramble, 9 
or Westminster, 4 



JuxON, Archbishop, 120 



Katharine of Aragon, Marriage of, 
129 

Katharine of Valois, 56-60 

Kennington, Richard II. 's connection 
with, 81-88 

— Palace, 69, 73 

Christmas at, 78-80 

Kings and Princes connected with Ken- 
nington, 81 

King's Bench Prison, 272, 274 



Lady Fair or Southwark Fair, 179- 

185 
Lambeth Palace, 109 

visited by Royalty, 114 

Langton, Stephen, 118 
Legend of Awdry, 1 5 
' Le Loke,' 64 

' Liberties ' of South London, 48 
' Liberty ' Prisons, 49 
London and Southwark, Difference 
between, 22 

— as a Port, lo 

— attacked by Bastard of Falconbridge, 

154-156 

— Original Site of, 23 



INDEX 



331 



London, Site of, from the Causeway, 7 
— Third Siege of, by Danes, 36, 37 
Long Barn, The, 70, 73, 75 
Lord Mayor's Pageants, 133 



Maitland's Discovery of Cnut's Canal, 

Manor of Lambeth, 1 17 

Marian Persecution, St. Mary Overies 

connected with, 199-204 
Marriages and Burials in St. Mary 
Overies, 64 

— at St. Mary Overies, 192, 193 
Marsh, Great South, 2 

— Islands in, 2 
Marshalsea, 279 

Memories of Greenwich, 98, 99 

Mint Street, Southwark, Sanctuary at, 

242, 246 
Monastic Houses, 50 
Montagu Close, Southwark, 242 
Monuments in St. Mary Overies, 196- 

198 
Morden College, 239 



New Mint Sanctuary, 246 
Nonesuch, 77 
Norfolk College, 239 
— House, 1 10 



Origin of Settlements in South 

London, 17 
Owen Tudor, 56-60 



Paris Gardens, 215 

Baiting at, 212 

Parish Clerks, Company of, 210 
Parliament at Lambeth Palace, 113 
Pax Romana, 17, 43 
Payn, John, 147, 151 
Peckham Rye, 312 
Penge Common, 312 
Philanthropic Work, 324 
Pilgrimage a Mockery, 165, 166 
— Insignia of, 1 57 



Pilgrimages, Choice of, 159, i6q 
Pilgrims starting from Southwark, 158 
Playhouses in Southwark, 220 
Pleasure Gardens, 282-288 
Poets of South London, 224, 225 
Population, Increase in, 316, 317 
Priory of St. Mary Overies, 192 
Prisons of the Liberties, 49 
Processions in Southwark, 124 
Punishments ordered by the Church, 

68 
Puritan Effect on Theatres, 221, 222 



Ravensbourne, 2, 3 
Red Cross Gardens, 315 

— House Tavern, 304 
Remains of Eltham Palace, 94 
Richard II. at Kennington Palace, 81, 

82 
River, First Embankment of, 11, 12 

— Wall removed, 28 

Roger of Wendover's Chronicle, 21 
Roman Connection with Causeway, 6 

— Method of Building Bridges, 28 

— Remains in South London, 14-16 
at St. Saviour's Grammar School, 

15 

— Trajectus, lo 
Rotherhithe, 305 
Royal Houses, 69 

— Manor, Valuation of, 72, 73 
Royalty at Eltham Palace, 92 
Rum, 10 



Sanctuaries, Later, 241 
Sanctuary at Southwark, 243 

— at New Mint, 246 
Savoy Dock, 230 

Settlements in South London, Origin 

of, 17 
Show Folk of Bankside, 206 
Site of London from Causeway, 7 

— of Original London, 23 
Snorro, Thirlesen, 22 
Society in the Borough, 261 
South London, Extent of, 2 
deserted, 20, 21 

named Southwark by Saxons, 2 



332 



SOUTH LONDON 



South London in Ruins and deserted, 

31 

Earliest Map of, 47 

of To-day, 301 

Southwark, Conditions of Existence, 12, 
13 

— and London, Difference between, 

22 

— Fair or Lady Fair, 1 79- 185 

— Famous Inns, 16 

— without a Wall, 17 

Stage Coaches, Start of, 258, 259 
St. Mary Overies, 191 

Dock, 10 

Marriages at, 192, 193 

— reconstructed, 195, 196 

connected with Marian Perse- 
cution, 199-204 

in Recent Times, 205 

St. Peter-on-the-Wall Chapel, 4 
St. Saviour's Abbey, 51 
St. Thomas's Hospital, 64 

— — — Foundation of, 66 

Roman Remains in, 15, 16 

' Stonegate,' 6 

Stubbs, History by, i 

Swegen and Olaf, Alliance of, 33-37 



Tabard Inn, Chaucer's Company of 

Pilgrims, 167 
Thames Fishermen, 14 
Theatre of Southwark Fair, 185 
Thorney, Trade of, 8 

— Island, Trade of, 4 
Tournament at Eltham, 94-96 
Trade of Thorney, 8 

— Route of South London, 4 
Traffic through Southwark, 256, 257 
Trench of Cnut, 3S 



Vauxhall Gardens, 

Site of, 113 

— or Copt Hall, 1 1 1 



294-299 



Tabard Inn, 268 



Walbrook, 8 

— Origin of I'ame, 3 
Walls repaired by Alfred, 31 
Walworfh, the Name, 23 
Wandle, River, 2, 3 
Westminster, or Isle of Bramble, 4 
White Lyon Prison, 280 

William the Conqueror enters Londoi 
by the Bridge, 43 

— III.'s Entry into London, 131, 132 
Willoughby, Sir John, 105 

Wyclyf s trial, 84 



